[dkarl]

I use big-A Agile to talk about the codified and sclerotic form of Agile taught by cookie-cutter consultants. Somewhere there is a sacred text, an Agile Leviticus, containing ceremonial forms that people adhere to with religious faith. Even if the forms fail and are adjusted or abandoned at one company, they will be revived in their original form at the next company, citing success at the first company as proof of their power. Thus Agile never changes no matter how often it fails, which is why it deserves to be a capital-A proper noun.

Little-a agile is a characteristic of software development organizations that programmers and managers strive to achieve, pragmatically adopting the processes that help them achieve it.

The Agile Manifesto can be used in service of either agile software development or Agile the consulting religion.

[Someone]

I know that in the more generic form:

  methodology is good, Methodology is bad.

I think this applies to any methodology, including waterfall. Another way to phrase this is "never stop observing, never stop acting on observations". Acting does not equate doing something, however. Even if you do nothing, and let the wagon roll on, you must know why you are doing nothing.