Is Agile dead, or has it evolved?

I have come across a lot of posts recently that talk about the death of Agile, or how teams have become counterproductive by being Agile. I have witnessed a war of words and anecdotes being flung around on how things have gone downhill for the blue-eyed-boy of the software development world. Over the years, agile has seen over commercialization with the advent of scaling frameworks, verticalization, and in general agile being pitched as the magic pill for all software development ailments. We have witnessed consultants blatantly selling frameworks to organizations under the garb of being the one-stop solution to all their problems. I don’t think there is anything wrong with defining frameworks but adopting frameworks without understanding the core philosophy of agile defeats the whole purpose. And therein lies the problem.

At one point in time, we had to sell agile to organizations. We had to showcase how useful it was over traditional methods of software development. With digital transformation at the forefront, software development has evolved over the years with changing market conditions and economic landscape. Naturally, strategies that were effective in the past must also adapt to the changing times. So, what felt like liberation a few years ago now feels like shackles. But what hasn’t become obsolete are the core principles of agile. It is important to understand that the current means to agility may be ephemeral, but the core philosophy is immortal.

Let me explain this with an example. I read a post recently about the Daily “standup” being useless and unproductive. The post detailed how this meeting was consuming time and the three questions proposed by Scrum were not helping achieve any notable outcomes. The agile manifesto says, “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools”. The daily scrum is one of the ways to encourage team interaction, transparency and smooth exchange of information. Scrum suggests that this is one of the ways to improve team communication and collaboration. There can be many ways to achieve this objective. Our aim is to understand the core agile value and discover ways to manifest it. Scrum gives us one option, but you are free to find your own ways. People adopt Scrum at surface level without understanding the real intent and end up labeling the framework as ineffective and inefficient. Just because some people were grievously injured during a gym session does not mean exercising is bad. It means that you must understand the needs of your body and adopt an exercise regime that suits you. Mimicking Arnold is not the solution. The construct of exercise and its benefits are not to be doubted here but the goal is to be healthy. ?With changing lifestyles, mental and physical stress, the ways in which we exercise to achieve fitness have to evolve. The goal does not change, the means to achieve the goals must be remodeled. This is what empiricism says.

The bottom-line is that the core philosophy of agile is still relevant and intact but the ways to achieve agility must change. Agile is not dead, for that matter, common sense, which is defined as a good sense and sound judgement in practical matters, can never go out of fashion. The world has become even more dynamic, uncertain and volatile – VUCA they call it. Managing chaos is extremely difficult and defining a process to counter it is even more difficult. So, the need of the hour is to understand and internalize the principles of agility and find ways of working that help us achieve our business objectives. We have a wonderful knowledge base of experiments and experiences documented in the form of frameworks. Let these established frameworks show you the light, but let your common sense be the guide to choose the right path to achieve meaningful outcomes. This, I believe, is how agility will continue to evolve.