Great article.
Now, the hidden question is maybe is agile still the same agile than at Snowbird or is agile only an evolution from lean management like in 1995? We are all part of the agile industrial complex (sorry Daniel) because we did compromises and never focused on the paradigm shift.
We are in the situation when W. Edwards Deming came back to simplicity.
One issue that I see is the unclear definition of “agile” which is curiously also its strength. Deming had the courage to not stick to his early assumptions by accepting the evolution.
Agile manufacturing (where the name comes from) had a very simple recommendation: responsivenss over robustness.
The agile manifesto is mostly about management and communication, and very few (2 sentences) are directly related to engineering or craftsmanship (no injuries here at all).
The declaration of interdependence tried to explain project management agility. But was forgotten by most of the practicionners.
We used agile techniques and had wishes for a better world, but very few didn´t really made it. How much real agile organizations in the last 20 years? I guess less than a dozen.
Business and IT working together has mostly been solved by scrum (I wrote mostly). Kanban, even if it´s very agile friendly, lead to transform teams in robots making exactly the same mistakes that Lean made: giving the power to the process owners and never go to the gemba.
Then came Lean Start´up and Radical Management and Management 3.0.
Put the new game changer came from Cynefin explaining how complex systems are working. But even this approach is not highlighting agility. Agile is the learning dynamics in Cynefin moving from Obvious to Chaos to Complex. Staying as long as possible at complex to switch to complicated and obvious again. To restart the loop again and again in a safe-to-fail container allowing experimenting and problem solving by all agents in that system.
Are we addressing engineering, business or management? None of this. We are addressing a new way of working embracing all kind of activities to engage its stakeholders, to use all they talents to accomplish great things that matters for their organisation.
The industrial complex works in a manufacturing manner with methodologies and processes that even an idiot can apply but infortunately don´t work. All the agile scaling approaches are obsolete by essence while reproducing an old vertical matrixed approach with new components like a new body paint on a old rusty car. Agile is flat, horizontal and is a new paradigm.
For us to shift to that paradigm with the same energy that the agile godfathers did by editing the manifesto.
Learn from the past, target the future, live today.
The agile industrial complex will show us what not to do.
