Oh wow amen to this. I've started calling one of our managers "Reverend". Particularly when he begins a meeting with a statement that's starting to sound a lot like "we are gathered here today to...".
I'm sympathetic to agile but it does have a quasi-religious feel to it. I've noticed that its proponents make claims about the right way to do things with an unwarranted level of certainty. When I ask "why" (politely) I seldom get a satisfactory answer and often they get offended by the very question.
All methodologies are created for people who do not understand "why", they are inherently religious. Otherwise why would you need a methodology if you do understand all the "why"s? You can just develop one much more suited for your people and your projects and fine tune it over time.
And this is not helped by the true believers constantly saying "you're doing it wrong."
So, point me at someone doing it right then! Because the landscape is coated with people "doing it wrong", and since I'm doing this as a job, I don't have time to sift through piles of pyrite for a single nugget of gold.
You forgot the tools! The current "capital-A Agile" project I'm helping out at started with long sessions where management and Agile Coaches developed a highly sophisticated (buggy) JIRA ticket workflow.
Even now, when we ask for something simple like a new Confluence board, we have to actively push back against new rules, additional restrictions, and more gimmicky Atlassian plugins. It pains me that these misguided parasites are paid to make my life worse.
Oh wow amen to this. I've started calling one of our managers "Reverend". Particularly when he begins a meeting with a statement that's starting to sound a lot like "we are gathered here today to...".