Bad Agile Is Dying... And That's the Best News Agile Has Had in Years

Bad Agile Is Dying... And That's the Best News Agile Has Had in Years Agile isn't dying. Bad Agile is. And honestly... that's fantastic news. For nearly two decades, organizations around the world raced to become "Agile." Some invested heavily in coaching. Others purchased new software. Many reorganized entire departments. Unfortunately, somewhere along the journey, a surprising number of organizations confused Agile with process. Stand-ups became status meetings. Sprint Planning became project planning. Retrospectives became complaint sessions. Story points became performance metrics. Velocity became a management scorecard. Scrum Masters became meeting coordinators. Product Owners became backlog administrators. The framework remained. The mindset quietly disappeared. Over time, employees became frustrated. Executives questioned the investment. Teams felt overwhelmed by ceremonies that no longer seemed connected to delivering value. Then something predictable happened. Organizations didn't reject Agile. They rejected bad experiences disguised as Agile. That's an important distinction. - [website] ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram] ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/ - [facebook] ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/ - [Linkedin] ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/

• 0:17Speaker 00

  I think many of you have probably already heard me talk about this topic. I don't know. 19,431.6 times, but we're going to go for it one more time. Because apparently we need to talk about it one more time. So here we go. One more for the one more.

• 0:33Speaker 00

  If you have followed any agile news at all on LinkedIn, on Reddit, on whatever thread you pick it, you've heard it. Here it comes. Agile is dead. Companies are finally abandoning Scrum. The agile experiment is over. It has failed.

• 0:53Speaker 00

  It feels like every few weeks, another article appears declaring the end of agile. At first glance, for many people who are practicing agile, those headlines sound alarming. When you take a closer look, something very different begins to emerge. I personally took the time to review as many of these topics as I can recently, just because I wanted to really understand. In my classes, I always teach the principle of help me understand. I wanted to practice what I preach. And here's what I quickly learned.

• 1:27Speaker 00

  So there's one single conclusion that is difficult to ignore. Here we go. Agile itself is not dying. There's the good news. But bad agile is the better news. And honestly, I'm going to go as far as to say that's fantastic news. It's incredible. For nearly two decades, organizations around the world were racing to become agile. Some invested heavily in coaches, others purchased new software like Jira. Many reorganized entire departments and workflows. Unfortunately, somewhere along the journey, a surprising number of organizations confused agile with delivery.

• 2:09Speaker 00

  Oh, they focused on output, not outcome. Standups became status meetings. Sprint planning became project planning. Retrospectives became wine sessions, W H I N E. Story points became performance metrics. Velocity became a management scorecard. Scrum masters became meeting coordinators and calendar jockeys. Product owners became backlog administrators. The framework itself remained, but the mindset slowly and quietly disappeared. Over time, employees became frustrated, cogs in a wheel. Executives questioned their investment.

• 2:49Speaker 00

  Teams felt overwhelmed by ceremonies that no longer seemed to connect to any value delivery. Then something predictable happened. Organizations didn't reject Agile. They rejected bad experiences disguised as Agile. And that's an important distinction. Imagine you're in a restaurant. My friend's gonna love me for this if she listens to this. Here we go. Imagine you're at a restaurant and someone served you an overcooked steak. You probably would not conclude, oh, this steak is terrible. You conclude that the dinner was prepared poorly. And that's exactly what happened to many organizations. Poor implementations created poor outcomes. And Agile unfairly took the brunt of the blame.

• 3:34Speaker 00

  Today, however, we're beginning to see something encouraging. Organizations are asking better questions. Instead of asking, are we doing Scrum or Agile correctly? They're asking, what value are we providing to customers? Are we helping customers faster? Instead of measuring how many story points team completes, they're measuring outcomes like customer satisfaction, cycle time, quality, business value, employee engagement. And those are all healthier conversations. We're also seeing leaders become a lot less interested in those rigid frameworks and more interested in adaptability and how things are going to work. And that's exactly what Agile was always intended to promote. Adaptation, learning, continual improvement, and never blind compliance.

• 4:19Speaker 00

  One of the biggest shifts we're witnessing is the move away from what many practitioners called mechanical Agile. Mechanical Agile was where we focused on checking boxes. Did everyone attend a daily Scrum? Did we estimate every story? Did we complete every ceremony? Did we update all the dashboards? Is Jira up and, you know, current?

• 4:42Speaker 00

  Human centered agile, or HCA, which you may hear again, asks different questions. Did the team learn something valuable this sprint? Did we reduce risk? Do we delight a customer? Do we become better than we were last sprint? Those questions create completely different organizations. Here's another interesting trend. Artificial intelligence, or AI, is accelerating all these transformations. Why? Because AI is becoming remarkably good at routine work. It can do documentation, reporting, summaries, scheduling, information retrieval. As technology absorbs the administrative work, organizations are beginning to recognize where real value comes from.

• 5:26Speaker 00

  Critical thinking, innovation, collaboration, leadership, creativity, trust. Ironically, AI can help agile become more human than it's been in years. And that is a fascinating development. Perhaps the biggest lesson emerging from all this is that agile was never supposed to be the destination. It was always supposed to be the vehicle to get to the destination. The destination is always and always should have been better products, better value, better customer experiences, healthier teams, faster learning cycles, organizations that remember they're thriving,

• 6:06Speaker 00

  organizations that forgot that it even struggled in the past. So when someone tells you agile's dead, I would be asking the following question as a follow up. Which agile are you talking about? The agile that focuses on customer collaboration? Or agile buried under endless meetings and rigid processes? Because those are two very different agiles. The future belongs to organizations that understand the difference. We're already seeing the next evolution emerge. Teams are blending agile practices with traditional governance where appropriate and doing agile. Organizations are embracing hybrid delivery models. Leadership is becoming way more adaptive. AI is augmenting decision making instead of replacing it.

• 6:52Speaker 00

  Continual learning is replacing rigid playbooks. This isn't the end of Agile. It's the beginning of a more mature version of what Agile should have been to begin with. One that focuses less on labels and more on outcomes, less on ceremonies and more on conversations, less on frameworks, more on solving real business problems. That's the future worth getting excited about. So today's challenge, next time someone says Agile is dead, don't argue with them. Instead, ask them what kind of agile they've experienced. You may discover they aren't criticizing Agile at all. They're describing bad leadership, poor implementation, or a culture that never fully embraced agility in the first place. And that's an entirely different conversation. And perhaps that's the biggest lesson of all.

• 7:35Speaker 00

  Bad Agile is indeed disappearing. Good Agile is evolving. And organizations that are willing to evolve with it are going to be the ones that lead the next generation of innovation and incorporate AI into their processes. That's going to do it. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you have a topic you want us to discuss, learn more at agiledad.com. We'd love to hear from you. And as always, we encourage you to stay healthy, stay well, and stay agile, my friends. Until next time, do take care. Bye now.