Agile Purists: The new epidemic

Over the last year, I’ve been watching the outbreak of a new epidemic: The Agile Purists. The Agile Purists are good samaritans who want to force me, in whatever way they can, to see and acknowledge that Agile is demonized and it needs to be rescued. Well…rescued from who? Well, apparently from another existing epidemic: Agile Coaches!

According to Purists, Agile Coaches are zombies, trying to “contaminate” anyone who comes across them, looking to convince their victims that only them (coaches) are the legit owners of the Agile word. On the other hand, the Agile Purists are the ones coming to rescue me from the claws of those terrible zombies, prophesying that Agile has lost its essence or that there are too many zombies and they (Purists) are coming to save me.

If it’s true that this liberation movement may have had its origin with a noble intention, the truth is that it clearly became a new way of generating income €€€€. Because this actually became such a strong conviction, I need to be more and more careful with every single word/expression that I write or say about this topic in order to avoid being hit by the Purification Cross.

The amount of useless discussions that surface every day is diabolic. For instance, if I write Agile with a capital ‘A’, am I putting the focus in a concept that it doesn’t exist? Or, will I be punished for the whole eternity because I wrote SCRUM instead of Scrum? Maybe the definition of DONE is the same as the definition of “good enough”? Or is a left handed person, who greets his right handed team mates with the left hand, demonstrating a complete lack of team spirit and respect? I’m sorry to say, but these are all pointless questions that are raised by Purists with only one purpose: because they want to gain back the attention of the community. This need that Purists have to differentiate themselves from the “rest” has generated a new epidemic which, from my point of view, is even more annoying when compared with the Zombies (the Coaches!) one. In fact, this is in such a way that sometimes I find myself dragged to this vortice of discussions, convinced that there’s a genuine and relevant interest behind the question that was asked, only to find a bit later that it was just another pointless discussion.

So, having said that, I would like to suggest that, instead of continuing to support this stream of demonization and trying to come up with useless and irrelevant absolute truths that generate useless discussions, the Purists should focus themselves in contributing with tacit, practical and applicable knowledge. After all, it’s not by chance that the most relevant references within the Agile world (uppss…here comes the Purification cross again!) do not engage in these kind of discussions, as they are too busy creating something really useful. 

#agilepidemic #agilepurists