Adding to the noise — Agile is Dead, Long live Agile

The bugles of the death of Agile in Software/IT Project execution have been sounded since 2013. Agile style of project execution is approaching its end of life, or so THEY say. But what’s the alternative? Waterfall gave way to iterative/incremental model which gave way to Agile, so then what’s next for Agile?

Pundits say it’s Continuous Delivery. If you search Hacker News (search link) you’ll see a myriad of links shared on the death blows to Agile. It ranges from ‘Agile was always wrong’ to begin with all the way to AI replacing all programmers and thus killing agile. Like a smart guy once said ‘Generally, all broad generalizations are wrong’. The irony is quite evident.

‘Generally, all broad generalizations are wrong’

So what’s it going to be? Let’s see the current landscape of Agile adoption and how enterprises operate. I checked a few surveys online to see how it’s faring. The data shows that a few companies are way ahead and have not only adopted agile but also embraced it in all aspects and have genetically evolved to fuse it in their culture, aka the DNA. These companies have adopted agility and not just Agile, there’s a stark difference between the two. It’s more important to use Agile as a Verb than a Noun.

In other corporations, that are still clinging to the traditions for unknown reasons (or same reasons we see it happening in our society) it’s been observed that the Process Gurus are trying to fit the Agile model in a box despite of Agile being an amoebic figment. Many seem to have forgotten the first statement of the Agile manifesto:

Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools

And that forgetting has has ruined Agile, the experts say and I agree. If you have to write a book ‘Agile for Dummies’, then the purpose of Agile is ruined. The term and spirit of Agile started being abused by the insecure enterprises that cannot see the control move to the teams, aka the Top Down management corporations. Their adoption of agile is like setting birds free with a string attached to their feet so they can fly within a radius of some x meters.

So let’s kill the word and practice of Agile and espouse Agility and Continuous Delivery. Let’s break free of the Process shackles and deliver quality software. Process experts don’t understand the ‘Tests as documents’ philosophy. Let’s educate them, because collaboration is the cornerstone of Agility.

Anything else in this post will be an attempt of subverting the spirit that is Agility. So go out and do Agility (pun intended).