Today we live in a technology-driven society where changes in technology, customer priorities, and market conditions occur quickly and constantly. To keep up with these changes, more and more organisations are employing an agile way of working, which allows teams to create and release products and/or services in increments by implementing short work cycles, in accordance with the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto.
However, the agile community is at present faced with the arduous challenge of restoring the agile approach. But why the need for restoration, one might ask? The controversial and lingering narrative that ‘Agile is dead’ appears to have motivated those at the helm of the movement and others to do something. This has taken the form of calls from agilists such as Jim Highsmith, co-author of the Agile Manifesto, to ‘reimagine’ Agile, and Scott Middleton, CEO of technology company Terem, to evolve its application to accommodate product-centric contexts. But before we delve further into the narrative regarding the perceived death of the agile approach, let’s consider what’s ‘alive’ about it.
The agile approach: alive and kicking
More than anything else, enthusiasm for the agile way of working is alive and well. To say it is alive metaphorically, we mean it is “active or thriving” (as Ebenezer Ikonne puts it). Organisations and teams are reaping concrete benefits from agile transformations, and there continues to be research and development into existing and new practices, ideas, and strategies. The 17th State of Agile Report for instance indicates that almost 70 per cent of respondents said the agile approach is used by software development, delivery, and IT teams, not to mention engineering/research and development teams that have seen the biggest growth in agile practice year-on-year.
As revealed in the report, benefits gained from healthy agile practice include improved collaboration, better alignment with business needs, better quality software, and frequent business feedback incorporation. The report also cites improved visibility, a better work environment, quicker response to competitive threats, improved user experience and customer service, increased time for innovation, higher product adoption, increased revenue, and on-time delivery.
Likewise, a recent research study on the transition from the Waterfall method to the agile approach reported tangible improvements in software development, such as better defects management (reduced number of defects and faster identification and resolution of defects), higher release frequency, and increased automation (Natarajan and Pichai, 2024).
It is also noteworthy that agile practices are increasingly being used in non-IT business functions, such as HR and marketing (16th Annual State of Agile Report). Regarding marketing for example, a research study by Moi and Cabiddu (2021) explores how Spotahome—a real estate digital company—utilises the agile approach in their marketing processes and strategies to effectively meet customer needs.
New agile approaches
In the agile community, new and revamped approaches, such as Hexi Method Kits, AgileSHIFT, Agile Marketing Capability, Agile Product Manifesto, and AgilePM3 are emerging to help the agile approach evolve to meet present-day needs and challenges, so that businesses can thrive at team and enterprise levels. These positive aspects certainly point to the fact that the agile way of working is still very much relevant, valuable, transformative, and crucial for organisations that want to remain high-performing, competitive, and disruptive in our technology-driven society. Therefore, although there are claims that support (and might well justify) the ‘Agile is dead’ narrative, we take a positive stance and affirm that the agile approach is very much alive as the backbone of contemporary organisations and teams.
The agile approach: dead and defective
Some agilists however, claim that Agile is ‘dead’ and defective, with a notable exponent of this narrative being Dave Thomas (co-author of the Agile Manifesto), who almost 10 years ago in his 2015 presentation said: “Agile is dead… but that doesn't mean we have to stop doing it.” He explained that the values of the agile approach have been completely lost behind its implementation, while also deploring the distorted use of ‘agile’ as a noun and not an adjective. In his opinion, the agile movement has become an industry where creators commercialise various frameworks and ideas. He believes it is time to reclaim agility, and other practitioners echo his sentiments.
Daniel Mezick castigated the agile community in 2016, describing it as the ‘Agile Industrial Complex’ meaning: “That web of Agile institutions, Agile thought leaders and Agile consulting firms that implicitly collude to make normal the very harmful and disrespectful imposition of Agile practices on teams without consent. The Agile space is now a “no-innovation zone.” It tolerates and in fact, perpetuates a highly weaponized version of Agile. Coercion, command-and-control, force, and the routine mandating of specific practices are how this game is played. The Agile Industrial Complex perpetuates and then monetizes a culture of coercion and force." The result is a worldwide pandemic of highly prescriptive, enterprise-wide Agile “trance formations.”
When teams are mandated and coerced to adopt long lists of required tools and practices in the name of agile practice—even when they are unnecessary—it leads to a trance-like state where they simply follow without questioning. This leads to fake agile, and constantly pushing them to adopt the latest tools and practices may lead to agile fatigue (XP 25th Anniversary Workshop & Panel Report: Innovating Software Solutions – Past, Present, and Future).
Highsmith laments that agile now “feels like just another checkbox exercise”, wherein teams conduct stand-ups not because they see them as valuable, but because they are compelled to—a deviation from the original design, which was characterised by flexibility, collaboration, and a value-driven mindset.
Adrian Dooley observes that nowadays individuals and organisations are judged as being either ‘agile or non-agile’. However, he predicts that in time, the focus will shift to agility and the recognition of its continuous nature.
For some agilists, the perceived death of agile could be fuelled by their experiential belief that it does not work, is valueless and unbeneficial, and does not help them in achieving software development and agile transformation expectations (Carroll et al., 2023).
For others, the crux of the matter is the misapplication of agile practices (McKenzie et al., 2021) as well as misconceptions held by creators of some agile approaches and problems with aspects of the Agile Manifesto, which contribute to the demise of the agile approach. Such misconceptions include seeing agile as a ‘sacrosanct’ product that must not be changed, and blind loyalty to the Agile Manifesto and frameworks, which leads to deterministic practices that make it difficult for teams to react to changes in context variations, thereby conflicting with the Agile Manifesto’s fourth value (Ozkan and Gök, 2021).
According to Middleton, the agile approach is at the plateau of productivity in the Hype Cycle. This indicates maturity, mainstream acceptance, and value delivery. But he also notes that “Agile has shifted from a set of shared values and principles to an empty, overused word that has been misapplied to almost anything an organisation does.”
All things considered, we can agree that the agile approach is presently in multiple states at the same time: it is both alive and dead. But the fact that agile is dead in the eyes of many does not mean it should be abandoned, as Dave Thomas rightly expresses. The question, however, remains, of what can be done in the agile community to restore the agile approach and fix its shortcomings.
Call to Action
1. Embrace agility
Individual agilists, teams, and organisations must firmly embrace agility in everything they do—their interactions, processes, strategies, and undertakings. They should intentionally build this capability. One way of achieving this is to follow an agile approach proposed by Dave Thomas:
- Find out where you are
- Take a small step towards your goal (where you want to be)
- Adjust your understanding based on what you have learned
- Repeat the above steps
- If you are faced with two or more alternatives that deliver approximately the same value, choose the option/path that makes future change easier.
2. Revisit the Agile Principles
The Agile Principles should be modernised to meet today’s needs and realities in the work environment. The COVID-19 pandemic engendered opportunities to re-examine pre-pandemic wisdom, to innovate, and adapt. Face-to-face communications and meetings may not be the most efficient and effective collaboration approach in some settings (e.g, remote and hybrid work environments). Depending on face-to-face interactions alone can inhibit flexibility and agility (Ozkan and Gök, 2021).
The abundance of sophisticated prototyping tools brings into question the principle: ‘Working software is the primary measure of progress’. According to Jesper Boeg, depending solely on working software as the primary measure of progress may not be ideal in all contexts and the practice can be very expensive for teams to build things to scale. Alternatively, simple, interactive prototypes can help to produce great solution insights, feedback, and validation.
Regarding self-organising teams (in the eleventh principle), Ozkan and Gök (2021) note that: “Having purely and fully self-organizing teams is impossible… Norms, rules, dependencies, restrictions and determining factors do not allow teams to organize themselves fully. Managers are still there. Regardless of whether there is an in-team manager or not, the team still receives direction from the top levels… The emergence of dependencies between teams and other entities indicates that the ability of teams to act independently and in a self-organized manner is not valid.”
3. Embrace tailoring and extend the agile approach
To promote its efficacy and increase its adoption, the agile approach must be open to change and flexibility, without blind conformity to particular frameworks or practices. It must embrace emerging realities and evolve its application to create pathways for more teams and organisations to create value faster and better in various contexts.
Continuous inspection and adaptation, continuous improvement and experimentation, as well as leadership engagement are key. In the software context, tailoring of a method refers to the adaptation of that method to the aspects, culture, objectives, environment, and reality of the organisation implementing it (Campanelli and Parreiras, 2015).
The undeniable reality is that not all organisations are ready to implement agile practice in full due to certain needs and constraints—some pick and choose what works for them, keeping other practices they follow and combining these with new practices to make the organisation more successful (Campanelli and Parreiras, 2015).
An international study, which found that hybrid approaches were similar in effectiveness to fully agile approaches, concludes that: “Hybrid approaches are not a poor second choice, but rather a natural evolution in the expanding range of challenges in project management(Gemino et al., 2021)". Other domains where the agile approach can be extended to create value include, but are not limited to, product management, artificial intelligence, marketing, HR, construction, and manufacturing.
In conclusion, it is safe to say that Agile is certainly in need of restoration to make it great again! As a final thought, we leave you with these thought-provoking words of Ozkan and Gök (2021),
“Agile as a noun, not an adjective, leads to an end; a binary state, finally, a dead state. However, agile as an adjective represents a journey guided by a mindset and principles. We should first and foremost focus on the mindset and principles rather than practices. We cannot reach to the agility mind-set through practices, on the contrary, we need to create practices in the light of mindset and principles.”
Please note blogs reflect the opinions of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the recommendations or guidance of the Agile Business Consortium.