Why agile has failed — and hasn’t…

The talk of Agile’s demise has been circulating for some time. While I can’t entirely dismiss the sentiment, I find it misleading for those not deeply immersed in the debate. Let’s dissect what has truly met its demise and what persists…

Recently, I came across this article titled “Agile has failed. Officially.” by Tamás Polgár), which is one example of this type of argument. The point made by Tamás and similar critics is that Agile doesn’t work, because organisations are not successful in applying ‘Agile’ AND that any new variant (e.g. Agile2) is just putting lipstick on a p̶i̶g̶ horse that’s been flogged to death long ago, or something like that…

While I strongly agree with a lot of points such critics of Agile raise (let’s not get into ‘Agile’ vs ‘agile’ here, that’s useless navel-gazing), believe two major misconceptions and, perhaps, a touch of bad faith characterize this discourse on agility:

Where they are right

Agility often falls short. Numerous organisations fail to realise the benefits they anticipated (or promised). Worse, the adoption of methodologies that are only agile by name (usually those with ‘Scaled’ in the name — you know who you are) have made many a product team’s live ̶P̶I̶I̶ ̶p̶l̶a̶n̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ hell and generally made their lives much worse than in a world without ‘agile’.

As Agile transformed into an enterprise buzzword, consultancies seized the opportunity for quick profits through agile transformations, coaching, and certifications. Dogmatic proponents, insisting only ‘their brand’ of agility works, have inflicted significant damage by imposing unsuitable (or outright ‘wrong’) flavours of agility on teams and organisations. And, indeed, just calling it a different name by way of clever branding, makes the turd still not smell like a rose.

Therefore, some conclude, Agile has been to proven to NOT work, and we need to go either back to a more linear approach OR, we do away with all of it, and need even less process (see no-process movement) and ‘just’ competence.

Where they are wrong

While there is merit in this criticism, my humble experience working with many teams and organisations over the years, some more agile, other less so, suggests that this is misleading, and in fact agile is not dead at all, but that a more nuanced (and in the end much more simplistic) argument is needed:

1. The principles of agility are a must for every successful delivery endeavour (have a look at this, which is how I introduce non IT people to Agility)
2. Not every endeavour necessitates or succeeds with every ‘flavour’ of agility. Again, I have explained this in here but the gist is that dependent on the level of uncertainty within the endeavour you may want an approach that focuses more on exploration and accounting for change or one that focuses more on repeatability (in the broadest of terms, think innovation vs mass production.
3. It’s not always agility’s fault; blame lies with organizations expecting rapid, effortless agile transformations under unfavorable conditions. Even more so, blame lies with g̶r̶i̶f̶t̶e̶r̶s̶ consultancies and agile transformation ‘experts’ selling snake oil methodologies, certifications, transformation programmes and related rackets to their naive marks.

So, for this reason, the notion that ‘agile’ is dead, is bs: it is very much alive and you burry it at your own peril.

BUT, let’t talk about Agile ‘methodologies’. While it’s true that agility must be applied contextually, and not every endeavour fits the same agile approach, agile methodologies (generally speaking) have their place:

• Adopting a no-process approach isn’t feasible for most teams and organisations. Extreme examples like Tesla, SpaceX, or Valve, where highly competent individuals work freely, are not the norm. Most organisations face legacy challenges, scaling issues, and varying levels of competence and experience within their workforce
• In an ideal world, you’d assemble a workforce perfectly aligned with collaborative values, process understanding, and a focus on value. However, hiring such highly ’competent’ staff, isn’t always achievable or sustainable, certainly not on larger scale. Not every worker easily adopts a fully agile mindset yet or ever, and that’s ok.
• Replacing agility with ‘focus on value’ is like saying you replace the journey with the goal. While true, this is not useful practical advise.

This is where agile methodologies come in: They provide the structure, guidance, and best practices that organizations and teams need to collaborate, co-create, learn, and scale successfully. Embracing a ShuHaRi skills development perspective, agile practices offer the necessary structure for Shu practitioners to evolve into more appropriate and contextual approaches as they progress toward Ha and Ri.

So here is what you need to do

1. Stop proclaiming ‘agile’ is dead and instead deliberately shift your organisational culture toward an agile mindset at a manageable pace.
2. Use agile methodologies when and where they are beneficial, experimenting with combinations and adapting as needed.
3. Beware of snake-oil salesmen promoting agile transformations or scalable agility.
4. Steer clear of agile dogmatists and ideologues.