It can be tricky to apply agile methods in a fundamentally waterfall environment. So tricky in fact, that we might be better off without agility.
Agile Manifesto was created to help creating software of value, which - according to the founders - required a different approach and a different set of methods altogether. The neccessary shift of approach was expressed in nice and clean preferences from wich the methods are more or less directly derived. If because of the circumstances we cannot make the shift in the approach, using the methods stubbornly makes little to no sense. I start with the easy ones, see if I can ruin it all for you..
(1) If the deadlines and the scope is fixed, moreover you need to deliver certain results (documentation, software, test results, etc) at certain times, you are following a plan, instead of responding to change.
(2) If you need to provide detailed req.spec, estimations, design documents, etc, then obviously working software is only of second priority, since the signing and the delivery of the contract relies heavily on these documents, rather than on working software itself.
(3) If you have to have the req.spec and the corresponding estimations upfront, you and your client - forced by contract - are bound to them(i.e. requirements and more or less estimations too). And then with even the best intentions you can get your client involved in the preliminary discussion only which are theoretic almost by definition.
(4)I left the toughest one for last.
The sobering truth is that - and a sick plot twist is around the corner, you better watch out - in such a hostile, anti-agile environment, as the above depicted one - applying agile tools and processes, in fact might be the wrong choice, and for the wrong reasons too. Because this in itself goes against agile principles in that it chooses processes and tools over people, who can't enjoy the benefits of agile methods, nonetheless have to invest the extra effort they demand. And almost all of it is completely in vain, as the software won't be any more of value than it would have been with traditional methods, because it will turn out to be exactly the thing that was required/designed/estimated/agreed-upon before any line of code had been written and/or tested.
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