Clearing up the “Agile is the solution!” delusion

There is no doubt that the Agile methodology is focused on consistently delivering high value to the customer and, at the same time, adapting to emerging situations and continuously improving performance. Be it Scrum, Extreme programming or Kanban, every effort has been made to design methods to accomplish exactly this. Agile is not just about having daily stand-up meetings, cumulative flow diagrams, task boards and other tools—it is a philosophy. In order for Agile to be successful, everyone on the team must buy into the philosophy.

However, organizations that depend solely on Agile to ensure the success of a project might be committing a grave error. Agile tools are only as good as the teams that handle them. For example, an organization with a bad business vision or flawed estimates cannot hope to be successful simply because it adopted Agile. Likewise, weak leadership and a demotivated team are likely to spell “D-O-O-M” for a project even when Agile is utilized.