Project Management Failures

I'd bet the problem there was with project management.

A bad project manager/lead could do that

What you are experiencing is pretty normal, and if you're looking for a new job, chances are that you're not the only ones; therefore the project will become even more "compromised", for lack of better word.Agile as a methodology solves the issue at a strategic level, but at the end of the day it is always human behavior that determines the way things work. Agile is a tool, and a tool is as good as the people who use it.I suspect that your project encompassed a lot of p

I am under the impression that this was a project management failure, not a technical failure.

Looks like that project suffered from the "hard to control" issue...

Well - I'm sure some projects fail because of stuff like this...

this imo is exactly why many projects “fail”, overrun or budget

I would say it can take an infinite amount of time, if you have bad management, scope creep (or no defined scope at all), high turnover, obsoleted core technologies, and if people give you money even if you don't do anything anyways

Sounds like ad-hoc lack of product/program/project management, a lack of setting customer boundaries, and manager/team lead backing you up. Also, startups do involve and sometimes need the flexibility to experiment, so not all effort will be used in the final thing. Plus, be aware not to keep it clean and proper because deferring crap too long leads to culture of tech debt that never goes away, it just gets worse geometrically and slows everything down until it's a singularly

Doesn't sound unusual for large projects with a long history that had deadlines to meet and a ton of actual users.