What does #Agile, or agility mean to you?

I believe an agile (note the small 'a') team producing your software is a very good thing. A team that can build software quickly, and alter their plans based on changing business circumstances is a fantastic thing! On the other hand, the Agile industry has turned 'Agile' a bit into something it wasn't intended on being. 

Agile was intended on empowering software developers to self organise to make the great software that their employers need - not gamifying software development and controlling software developers. It is designed for working with a software team who you can trust to do their jobs, not for enabling management to perform micromanagement. If you can't trust your team to do the work they need to do, you need to look at your hiring practices - not at your management practices.

There's a great talk on this by Dave Thomas - one of the authors of the Agile Manifesto - called 'Agile is dead (long live agility)' that I recommend - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqz8ND-N1hc

So - if you're becoming agile, why? Did you look at the Agile Manifesto, or at the Scrum Guide (if that's the flavour you're going for)? Do you understand the reasons WHY agile was invented? Are you doing it because it's the done thing? Are you trying to force everybody into agile, while keeping your current management structure? Do you have management who TRUST your employees, or does your management feel that they must guide all work in order to make things happen correctly?

Do you WANT to actually be agile, or do you merely want to say you are?

Being agile is more than getting a consultant to change the names of your teams to 'squads' and 'tribes', and increasing the amount of meetings that you're having.