[jdlshore]

> Anyone else notice Agile creeping in where it has no place being?

Eh, not really. Agile is barely practiced by any companies.

What most practice is a gawdawful abomination of micromanagement and iterative waterfall that they have the audacity to call it “Agile.”

Agile is clearly defined in the Agile Manifesto. (Don’t forget the principles on a second page.) All you have to do is treat it like a checklist and you’ll see it’s barely practiced anywhere. (“Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools? No. Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation? No.” Etc.)

Maybe I’m getting jaded.

[dragonwriter]

> Agile is clearly defined in the Agile Manifesto.

Vague principles for Agile are laid out in the Manifesto, and slightly less vague in the Principles. But honestly, clear definition isn’t really something that the Agile prime movers did (the best ideas for operationalizing Agile principles, IMO, were in the Lean Software movement, but unfortunately “Agile” instead ended up getting associated – and I think the lack of operationalization of the principles in the core documents contributed to this – with rote application of one of a handful of methodologies some of the founders were associated with, which eventually settled mostly on Scrum, and then on not even Scrum-by-the-Scrum-Guide but a weird set of particular tools and things that had accreted around Scrum, each of which is useful in the right context, but they’ve become this giant consultant-reinforced cargo-cult mass of rituals divorced from their purpose in exactly the way of the ossified practices that the Agile movement was a reaction against.)

[MattPalmer1086]

Oh, I completely agree that what is called Agile is about as far away from the original manifesto as can be.

It could only really work in exploratory, high trust, high performing environments in my opinion. I've seen that rarely.

Contracts are pretty much in direct opposition to agile practices. Most organisations won't sign an open ended committment to get something without that being defined up front.

What companies call agile seems to be a synonym for faster releases, and faster time to market for the business. It is more agile from their perspective, just not for the practitioners!

[karmakaze]

It's well established that "Agile" with a capital-A has become a self-serving industry and cargo cult. The original manifesto has to be renamed to distinguish itself from that, which some call agile little-a, or agility, etc. Whenever there's a negative post on Agile, it's of the former identification and not the original motivations or methods.

[rolisz]

Yes and no. Yes, the principles of Agile sound nice, but no, I've never seen them done properly. At every company where I've worked, when Agile got adopted, things went downhill