Agility. This word, once vibrant with promises of liberation, fluidity, and radical innovation, now sounds like a refrain to many. Agile principles, born of a need to free ourselves from rigid processes, seem to have become frozen in new dogmas. The revolution has given way to a form of monarchy where emblematic figures, our agile idols, dictate the way forward.
This article is not a trial. It is a critical reflection on the symptoms of a drift that concerns us all: the glorification of a few and the adoption of a “ready-made thinking” that stifles the very spirit of agility. It is not about denying our heritage, but about questioning the immobility that awaits us when we stop thinking for ourselves.
Homeostasis, the disease that freezes systems
Every system seeks to maintain its balance, its homeostasis. The world of agility is no exception. To preserve itself, it tends to keep the same opinion leaders in place, the same headliners we see from conference to conference. However, keeping the same spokespersons for too long can be a sign of a system that refuses to evolve. Changing individuals is sometimes the only way to make ideas evolve.
This is how agile idols are born. Figures like Jurgen Appelo, with his M3.0 and then unFIX models, or Dean Leffingwell with his sprawling SAFe framework, offer packaged answers. Their ideas, often relevant syntheses of existing work, are elevated to the status quo. We are no longer asked to choose, reflect, or adapt; we are sold a turnkey kit. Craig Larman, going so far as to create his own “laws” and name them after himself, illustrates this shift where the expert becomes a prophet.
Did agile die the day the majority of its practitioners started using the word “user story” to describe a simple task?
The problem isn’t so much the existence of these models as the dependency they create. Practitioners find themselves waiting for the next revelation, the new life-saving framework. And when the new thing disappoints, inflated egos lead to polarisation and turf wars, as evidenced by the schism tearing apart the Kanban (Kanban University vs. ProKanban vs. Scrumban) or Scrum (Scrum Alliance vs. Scrum.org) communities. Each side defends its own faction, forgetting that no one has a monopoly on the truth. Ironically, these agile idols of adaptivity rarely seem to “drink their own soup,” stuck in the paradigms they created, sometimes twenty years ago.
The Worship of Agile Idols: Symptoms of an agility sick of its certainties
This tendency towards ready-made thinking infuses our daily practices and manifests itself through several symptoms.
Scrum, the “management wrapper”
As Jonathan Rasmusson describes in The Agile Samurai, Scrum has too often become a simple “managerial wrapper.” A panacea for the middle manager, himself a victim of a system he feeds, which allows him to set up a circus of rituals to mask underlying problems that would, in reality, only require a little courage. We then fall into the law of triviality: entire teams passionately debate the colour or value of story points, the last thing that could move them forward, simply because it is easier than addressing the real blockages.
The Race for Meaningless Certifications
When certification becomes the goal, learning becomes secondary. We are witnessing a proliferation of “mindless” training courses that teach the basics of Scrum or another framework, just enough to pass an exam. We completely forget the Shu-Ha-Ri learning model. Practitioners, after watching two “Scrum Life” videos, proudly imagine they have reached the Ri stage (creative mastery), while they still struggle to apply Shu (follow the rules). True expertise is dying in favour of a stamp on a CV.
The Spectacle of Thought
Echoing Guy Debord’s ‘Society of the Spectacle,’ sensationalism replaces in-depth reflection. Why read books, which require time and concentration, when you can attend a lecture by an iconic figure? Speech replaces reading, emotion replaces analysis. We no longer seek knowledge; we seek agile idols.
Agility for agility’s sake: the drift of self-interest
Perhaps the worst part of all this is the creation of a sterile “in-crowd.” Professional coaches who love to talk about agility among themselves, disconnected from the realities of the developers they are supposed to serve. We do agile for the sake of agile; we apply practices without questioning their meaning.
Did agile die the day the majority of its practitioners started using the word “user story” to describe a simple task? Or the day a framework became a mandatory answer rather than a possible option?
Scrum Masters are exhausted in every direction because “it’s not working anymore,” but the humility to say “maybe we should move on” is no longer there. The framework has become more important than the problem it was supposed to solve. Too many practitioners remain trapped in the shadow of their agile idols, unable to think beyond the frameworks they’ve been taught to worship.
This article offers no solutions, no miracle method for “doing better.” That would be falling back into the very trap it denounces. The goal is elsewhere: it is to allow you to question yourself with these questions, and from this, hope to bring out new ideas within you, opportunities for your needs.
True innovation, as Rick Rubin suggests in The Creative Act, can only emerge from new ways of being and doing, not by endlessly applying other people’s recipes. It’s time to look beyond idols, not to deny a precious heritage, but to regain the courage to think for ourselves and, perhaps, to reinvent agility.
References
- Rasmusson, Jonathan. The Agile Samurai: How Agile Masters Deliver Great Software. Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2010.
- Rubin, Rick. The Creative Act: A Way of Being. Penguin Press, 2023.
- Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Buchet-Chastel, 1967.
- Parkinson, C. Northcote. The ‘Law of Triviality’, as expounded in Parkinson’s Law: The Pursuit of Progress, 1957.
- The Shu-Ha-Ri Model (Shu-Ha-Ri): A concept from Japanese martial arts describing the stages of learning to mastery.
- The work of Jurgen Appelo (Management 3.0, unFIX), Dean Leffingwell (SAFe), and Craig Larman (LeSS).