I’ve worked on supposed “Agile” teams that operate this way, and worked on an Agile team that actually work ridiculously well. The biggest issue with Agile isn’t the philosophy, it’s when management starts using it to cut costs. This comment is what it turns into. Notice that every single one of these points lower cost. But one of the main assumptions of Agile is that the workers control the work, managers support the workers. The places I’ve been where Agile didn’t work it was because management was unwilling to buy into this basic assumption, then use Agile as a crutch for not giving the team what they needed to be successful.

The one successful team I was on that was Agile, the entire group of around 12 worked directly with the customer, and our manager’s role was to ask “what do you need”. It was hands down the best dev role I was ever in (before I became a teacher).

This just in: intentionally misrepresenting something has a 100% chance of it being misrepresented.

Let’s try again:

• proper tools are important, but not as important as the people using them
• documentation is important, but not as important as the software functioning correctly
• working with the customer to accomplish their needs is more important than adhering to the letter of a contract
• plans are important, but dogmatically applying them above the spirit of their intent is harmful

I understand the frustration; almost nowhere does agile “right”. However, this is a gross misrepresentation of the philosophy.

Specifically it leaves out and ignores this very important part:

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

As seen on agilemanifesto.org

The base philosophy is meant to remind us what we are here to do: make software (or whatever project we’re working on), not become dogmatic about processes or tools or get bogged down in peripheral documentation.

This has been my experience of agile in multiple workplaces.

eXtreme Go Horse Methodology