"FYI, Agile Is Dead"

When it comes to articles that make my blood boil, there’s never a real shortage. No week passes without one or the other proclaiming the death of Agile or its complete futility.

Every time I read one, I wonder how these authors would fare revealing their expose to any of the teams living and breathing Agile today. I picture a scene from some sitcom or other where the author is sent to impart their wisdom on a classroom of preschoolers and they pull up a tiny plastic chair and start reading out loud about how Agile can’t scale, is an old framework and is ultimately too much process. Picturing it usually lets me calm down, and makes the article bearable.

Don’t get me wrong, no one is asking for unquestioning, in fact, the best thing we can do for ourselves is to keep wondering what’s what and keep being open to any type of change on any front, of course, so we must be open to the possibility that we need to severely course correct, but it’s all in the intention. Pointing out flaws with the intention to tweak and modify and grow is an entirely different story than doing so for imaginary brownie points and to tear down.

When I find these articles I do first spend time on a first scan-read scouring for legitimate objections. Did the author bemoan the far too prescriptive Scrum ceremonies? Check. Did they denounce SAFE as impossible? Check. Have they blamed at least one, largely unconnected organisational ailment on Agile? Totally. 

It’s usually “Agile is old news…. Scrum this…. SAFE that…. and that is why we can’t have diversity!” Or “… and it’s because of this that there’s a toxic political environment in this organisation.” Or any other version of “…and this is why we can’t have nice things”. Ludicrous as they may read to you or me, what each of these represents is fodder for inertia and excuses for unconvinced execs.

When I stumble upon the article myself it’s one thing, but the more heartbreaking happening is when I get them serendipitously forwarded from some exec or other. Thankfully none -yet!- that I have had a version of our “Agile at the top” workshop with, or it would be really painful to see that those “a-ha! moments” weren’t either authentic enough or lasting enough for them to return to the “Yes…but”. 

The forward usually comes in an email or message without comment as if the forwarder washes their hands of the content and has no opinion one way or another on whether the death of Agile is near but they simply wanted me to see them. An “FYI, Agile is dead” subtext.

Or rather - “FYI, this person said Agile was dead, I have no real opinion, will wait until you write back with the equivalent of a facepalm where you finally admit you’ve been wrong all along and this thing is not making us faster and better.”

It would be funny if it weren’t sad. 

More annoying still, the author is writing with the “FYI” crowd in mind too. I can’t imagine they fashioned that piece and imagined themselves in front of a few teams at any of the elite digital performers defending it. “This way of thinking of yours and this way of making magic of yours, how you move fast and do well, it’s all BS. I’m telling you, this just “doesn’t work” and we need to accept it is dead”. In the words of Mery Poppins “Can you imagine that?”

To the FYIers in my inbox this week: “Come on now, you know better than that.” To the authors: “You do too. You don’t believe this drivel in your heart of hearts and know that no matter what you write today, your kids will still never be waterfall-y, slow, sequential, process-driven and oblivious to customer feedback. Right?” 

RIGHT?!?

I wish you all a week of no FYI sent or received so you have time to prove it wrong.