Back last year, I started a reflection on whether Agile might be dead, undead, or still alive and thriving. Ever since I saw my blog entry series popping up in Jurgen Appelo’s collection of blog entries on the topic, I was reminded that I still lack a wrap-up of my thoughts, after having gone through them. Let’s start this year with a reflection on my reflections.

Other entries in this series:

• “Agile is dead” – and I thought, I had that conversation…
• Agile is dead
• Agile is undead
• Agile is alive

P.S.: On a personal note, 10 out of 45 colleagues at it-agile have been informed last week, that their employment contract will end this year. That will include myself as well. You can see the more general announcement (in German) on LinkedIn. That said, if you’re looking for someone with my skills, talents, or know anyone that I might be a good fit for, I’d appreciate if you reach out to me, or gave me a hint in another fashion. Thank you in advance.

Different things to different people

I basically started off this series with a re-utterance of Jerry Weinberg’s famous “Quality is quality to some person” statement, and the generalizations from James Bach and Michael Bolton.

Looking back, the context-driven testing community names the underlying problem a shallow agreement. We think we agree on what certain things mean, but that ain’t so. That might have been the problem with the Agile goldrush, as Scott Ambler coined it a while ago in a similar entry.

Agile is dead

Companies that tried to jump onto the Agile hype train sooner or later found out that it’s not just a thing you do in the IT department of your larger enterprise. That’s when crisis hit the internal agile coaches and Scrum Masters that focused solely on their own team without keeping the underlying organizational system in their view.

When Agile is understood merely as a tool to bring shareholders value by re-organizing the IT department, things are bound to go awry. Or as Virginia Satir put it:

The beginning of a crisis is always the end of an illusion.

The beginning of the crisis in the Agile community that appears to spread not only nationally in Germany, but world-wide, is merely the end of the illusion, that – 20 or so years in – the goldrush will continue.

Agile is undead

That sort of effect comes bundled with a burnt landscapes (hope that wording is not too soon after the California fires). Companies applied their understanding of Agile with their understanding of corporate structures and ceremonies.

That kind of mix-and-match approach unfortunately did not work, does not work, and will probably never work. Usually my articles are colored and inspired by recent happenings and the things I’m reading at the moment in time. John Roberts refers to the pitfalls and failures of the mix-and-match approach in his book The Modern Firm. Event after decades of Organizational Development floating into the enterprises of the world, they still appear to lack that particular insight, thereby creating Agile zombies with their version of mix-and-match.

Agile is alive

Yet, there are few more skillful Organizational Developers, that seem to succeed. In those places, the discussion around Agile or not has vanished. Instead these companies excel – even in economic stressful times – at what they’re doing.

After all, the whole conversation around Agile once started with adaptability. The question though remains, to which extend will the Agile undead companies infect their thriving competitors with their version of the zombie virus.

Call it Moral Mazes, Mad Business, or the Knowing-Doing Gap, maybe sticking to survivor’s bias will not work in the long run, even for an approach that claims to be adaptive.

So what? Now what?

From my point of view, Agile is not dead or undead. The problems stem from the lack of adaptability in the Agile methods and frameworks on their own. Some companies succeed, yet, still too few to have an impact.

Along comes the aging of the original proponents. The last update to the Scrum Guide has taken place nearly five years ago. Even though, responsibilities to keep the Guide current also face the struggle that there is a thriving industry behind it that earns money by sticking to the old ways, yet neglecting considerations like non-static, more dynamic teams, and the uprise of second- or even third-generation scaling frameworks like UnFIX or FAST Agile diversify the landscape that was once focused on Scrum vs. Kanban.

I think this is a natural development that had to take place. Don’t ask me where it will lead, though. There might be a post-Agile hype goldrush on the brink right now, there might not. I suspect, only time will tell us, so there’s value in staying patient, and continue to educate and coach what we learned works on our work places.

No deep insight, you may suspect, but remember, there is no silver bullett.