Agile Is Not Dying; It's Dissolving

Agile conferences are now half their size compared to before COVID-19. Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches are losing jobs left and right, and social media seems filled with negative opinions about Agile transformations.

Is Agile now finally dying?

I think not. It’s just dissolving.

Reading Elon Musk’s biography on Tesla and SpaceX, the themes are clear: adapting to change, eliminating waste, and accelerating innovation. LEGO’s fascinating story highlights self-organizing teams, rapid experimentation, and close collaboration with end users. The experiences with Haier showcase a company focused on decentralization, autonomous units, and zero distance to customers.

Each of these companies experienced incredible growth in the last two decades. They are all highly agile, yet they don’t use the label “Agile.” More importantly, none of these successful businesses adhere to Scrum, SAFe, or any other agile framework. Yet, they seem to be agile to the bone.

Agile is dissolving, not dying.

When a medicine or other substance dissolves in water, it doesn’t vanish; it’s just no longer visible or tangible. However, with some effort, you might still taste or smell it, like the psyllium powder I add to my cereal every morning.

There was a time when computer and software training was a lucrative business. In those days, I earned a good living writing “MS Word Advanced” courseware and teaching “Programming in Microsoft Access.” I even traveled across Europe to attend conferences! But those days are long gone. Nowadays, few people attend events or two-day classes to learn a piece of business software. (Although, when I see how some people use Word or Excel, I wish they did!)

With Agile, it’s going to be the same. Why bother organizing events about something that’s all around us? Why hire coaches and consultants to teach people how to “be agile, not do agile?” Why do we still give it a label?

Agile is not dying, it’s dissolving. We might not see or feel it, but we can taste and smell it. Similar to not using computers, not being agile is not an option anymore. People will be swimming in agility—and some will be drowning. For sure, many are not going to understand the difference between Scrum and Kanban. (Like, in Word, where people still make a complete mess of tabs and tables.) But you can forget about training and conferences.

That makes me wonder:

What now?

I’ve created a very small survey (just three open-ended questions) to understand the evolving landscape after Agile.

What is now the main concern or interest of higher management?

What happens with budgets that were previously spent on Agile?

What is the next big thing worth talking about, after Agile?

From the responses, I will select five participants to receive a signed copy of my book, Startup, Scaleup, Screwup. With my team, I will analyze your answers for trends and patterns and I’ll share my insights in a future blog post.

TAKE THE SURVEY AND (MAYBE) WIN A BOOK!

Agile is dissolving. Let’s adapt to the change.

Jurgen