Markus GƤrtner has recently explored the idea of whether Agile is dead, or not.
So, I thought Iād ask you: is Agile dead?
- Yes
- No
- Itās complicated
- Something else, please comment!
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Markus has a specific definition I can agree on:
āI think Agile is dead in those companies that saw Agile as a new vehicle, without trying to understand the underlying paradigmā
In companies understanding the underlying paradigm is Agile alive.
There might be fake and dark applications of Agile, but there are also good applications.
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Iām gonna be honest, I have no idea what it means when people say things like, āx is dead, long live xā. And I donāt have any reason to think Iām missing out by not getting it, as I havenāt come across anything so intriguing or thought provoking in these discussions that I particularly want to find out.
Iām not sure how useful that kind of discussion really is. Rather than wondering whether something is still popular or working for other people / in other contexts, I prefer to take ideas from different places, then focus on whatās right for my context at a particular time.
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As with other aspects of life, to reignite our enthusiasm, we often replace old terminology with new, seemingly cleverer terms. For me, Agile is not ādeadā as a methodologyāit may just be ādeadā as a term.
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This!
Companies are trying to implement āthe spotify modelā without understanding their own needs and just copy-pasting from other models. Instead of making their own model.
Then they complain āit doesnāt work for us, agile is deadā
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Deciding if Agile is dead implies we can definitively say it was alive. Iāve been in 2 teams in 20+ years that did software development well using Agile techniques. Each was Agile agnostic so didnāt follow a prescribed methodology such as Scrum for example. Each team updated processes regularly as a response to improving an aspect or because of an external pressure. In its broadest form we were Agile teams and that way of working works. So it is a definate no. But as there are so many teams who are told they are Agile but really are not. Itās complicated.
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Here is my 2 pennies worthā¦
At the risk of strapping a target 
to myself, hereās my take on whether Agile is dead 
. As someone who has recently delved into Agile theory, I donāt believe itās dead, but it has certainly lost its way. Many tool developers have jumped on the buzzword bandwagon 
, branding their tools and frameworks as āAgile.ā This trend has overshadowed the true essence of Agile. Agile is not about tools or frameworks; itās a philosophy. This core philosophy has been somewhat forgotten. If we can focus on the simple manifesto and principles, Agile still has a key role in software development. #TheTestingGame
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In the most straight forward aspect no its not dead, its 12 principles and I suspect it would be very challenging for any team or company to say not a single one of the principles apply to their projects and development.
Are teams actively applying all 12 principles, this is much rarer though so perhaps from that perspective its not a specific thing any more.
I think it was 20 odd years ago I first go involved in Agile and it was more active to take all 12 principles and try and apply them to work practices.
The important element was where we were coming from before, it was very waterfall, 12 months development with a lot of testing by a separate group at the end and once a year deliveries. Less companies are in that situation these days so the active application of the principles to create the complete mindset change is not so relevant.
20 years ago we ran into what I feel was the biggest blocker, the customers who still wanted a fixed price and to know exactly what they were getting at the end up front, those constraints limit the potential value of Agile but not completely unworkable.
Agile then adapts to your own constraints but if you pick and choose some of the principles its likely many are still useful.
Hardcore scrum is a different matter, Iāve never seen it last more than six months, perhaps its like training wheels to invoke a significant change in work practices but after six months the wheels come off and the team just gets on with it with some of the good elements now natural and being applied without even the consideration of scrum or agile in the teams mind.
Dailies and sprints for many teams remain very common for example but often no mention of Agile and half the teams have never read the principles so these are just practices the teams find useful.
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No, but like many things, the term is highly misunderstood and misused, which might lead people to think that it is. Especially those who have only experienced āagileā in a context where it is poorly understood or implemented.
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If itās dead then what is alive, instead of Agile? and of course, there might be different arguments but generally speaking the term Agile is always has been quite broad in my opinion (and itās fine) so it really depends on the context (maybe some could say that it was born dead)
- Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through the early and continuous delivery of valuable software. = Make sure customers want to give us money
- Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customerās competitive advantage. = Do whatever the customer wants, before our competitors do (aka Product Stickiness stickiness - Wiktionary, the free dictionary)
- Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale. = Basically donāt allow bugs to gather dust-bunnies
- Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project. = Naah
- Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done. = If I wanted loyalty I would get a dog
- The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation. = Pub lunches are not productive
- Working software is the primary measure of progress. = We love metrics, but not your metrics
- Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely. = We believe in doing big pushes to get things done, itās not a marathon itās a sprint?
- Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility. = Skills training? We donāt have time, just learn on the job
- Simplicityāthe art of maximizing the amount of work not doneāis essential. = Oh that feature we decided was not shippable, that was an experiment, not a waste of resource at all
- The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams. = We donāt need more managers
- At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behaviour accordingly. = Isnāt that what retro meetings are for, a chance to blow some steam and then do the same thing again next month
Forgive the flippant translations that I give from Manifesto=> Reality, Iām in a Friday mode. I honestly donāt agree with all of the manifesto, most, but not all. I think, at itās heart, that people-skills trump any productivity metrics under the sun that you can invent, so I will buy 1,2,3,4,6,8,10
I disagree on 12 because adjustment needs to really be happening every single morning, not just after every retro. Software is a marathon, you win by making tiny changes to things every single hour. When the starters pistol goes at the start of a feature cycle, itās actually too late to find your favourite or lucky running socks. Your mileage may vary.
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Agile like anything else is just a framework. I think the focus should be on what is the problem youāre trying to solve? Agile practices can solve problems but so can Waterfall ideologies for example.
If Iām building a car on an assembly line. Iām not going to shut down the assembly line to do UAT on every part that is made. So waterfall makes sense here and not agile since āI know what this car should look like, function like at the end of the processā So it doesnāt require sprints/kanban/retros etcā¦ We could use Agile to do the prototyping of the vehicle before it goes into a Waterfall production as that would require things like UAT, sprints and a constant feedback loop.
So is Agile dead. No. Is Waterfall Dead. Also no. It depends on the problem weāre trying to solve, and how we(or the company) finds value in these frameworks and their ability to solve them.
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