All too often I read or hear ‘Agile doesn’t work!”

It’s an interesting one to ponder.  Over the years I’ve found when traditional programs fail people tend to blame other people not the process.  In fact I don’t recall a single person blaming waterfall, or any of its constituent parts, for their failure – instead they typically focus on blaming the project manager or the architects or even their customers.

I suspect the reason behind this is because Agile really is about people and not process – aka Mushy Agile.  Agile promotes communication, collaboration, courage and change (when needed).  And it’s much more difficult to blame your colleagues when you’ve been getting to know them as people too.

Really – take look at the Agile Principles and try to find one that you think would directly contribute to failure.  Can you fail because you supported motivated people? Or by delivering working software?  Or how about if you seek to improve your technical excellence?  How about continually making improvements as you learn more?   Can any of these could possibly be deemed the path to failure?

I believe not …