How Agile Became a Cargo Cult

Photo by Timelab @timelabpro on Unsplash

Agile used to mean something. The idea that it was by developers and for developers, and that the same could actually get work done without being bogged down by bureaucratic nonsense.

✅ People over process

✅ Adaptive collaboration

✅ Common sense

So, what has motivated The Secret Developer to write an Article about Agile, while they’re waiting for a build to happen (True story. I’m WFH today, OK? Don’t judge me). 

It’s because Agile has become a parody of itself.

It’s effectively a cargo cult, a belief that if we just follow the rituals then success will magically follow.

The Way it Should Be

Agile has been taken over by the corporations. It’s become a set of rituals that are there simply for the sake of rituals. That means that teams perform their daily stand-ups, hold their retros, and religiously follow their two-week sprints, whether they work or not. I’ve seen that they frequently don’t work, and nothing ever changes. 

Don’t get me started on SAFe, the nightmare that Agile becomes when fitted out as a process-heavy top-down bureaucracy

Shouldn’t Agile Mean Agility?

When Agile first took off, it was scrappy, flexible, and informal. Sprints weren’t of equal length. Teams adjusted their process as needed. Ceremonies existed, but only when they added value.

Crucially, Agility was driven by engineers and not put into place by managers.

Here are some crucial things that Agile was about

✅ Delivering real software instead of filling out roadmaps.

✅ Collaborating as needed instead of forcing stand-ups at 9:15 AM sharp.

✅ Adapting to reality instead of religiously following the backlog.

The thing is that it initially worked. That’s why it took on a presence in so many software development firms all over the globe.

Yet Agile stopped delivering. Companies started using a flavor of Agile that doesn’t work.

Where did it all go wrong?

When Management Gets Involved, Agile Stops Being Agile

Management decided they needed to measure software developers. They needed to start measuring the number of commits that software developers push. They want everybody to be productive and aim for measurement while forgetting about improvement.

Then came the Agile Consultants, Agile Coaches, and Agile Certifications.

This was supported by executives who saw agile as a silver bullet. It didn’t matter that they had no clue what Agile was, they figured, “If we follow the Agile process, we can’t fail!”.

Over time, Agile turned into a rigid, one-size-fits-all framework.

It became another form of corporate control.

❌ Mandatory stand-ups where nobody listens.

❌ Sprints that are just mini-waterfalls.

❌ Story points as performance metrics.

❌ SAFe, where agility goes to die.

Teams lost control of their processes. Agile stopped being about delivering value and became about following The Process™, if you didn’t sufficiently follow it you didn’t believe in Agile you don’t share our values.

Why It’s a Cargo Cult

In World War II, islanders saw U.S. troops building airstrips and receiving supply drops. After the war, islanders built fake runways and control towers because they believed it would bring back the cargo. They mimicked the paraphernalia while missing the point entirely. 

That’s exactly where corporate Agile is at now.

Stand-ups

Even if we don’t actually share anything, stand-up meetings still take place. They’re simply what Agile teams do and take place even if we fail to measure the impact they have.

Estimation

I’ve seen teams estimate in story points and T-shirt sizes because that’s what agile teams should do. Some estimate time, some estimate complexity.

It astonishes me that I’ve worked in a team where story points mapped to time (1 point == 1 day), but any point needed to be a Fibonacci number. This means that no task can ever take 4 days! Please tell me how that improves planning.

We go through the motions, but the productive outcomes never materialize.

Agility Was Never About Process

The irony? Real agility isn’t about frameworks or ceremonies. It was about software developers making software and getting it into the hands of customers.

That should mean:

✅ Trusting teams to adapt instead of forcing them into a rigid process.

✅ Cutting unnecessary meetings instead of adding more.

✅ Focusing on outcomes instead of rituals.

If your Agile process makes it harder to do good work, it’s not Agile. Good Agile makes things easier and makes the process of software development better. We’ve slipped into a pattern where Agile isn’t helpful, it’s just corporate theater.

Conclusion

Agile was supposed to be the antidote to rigid corporate nonsense, and the fact that it’s descended into another flavor of it is quite frankly depressing. 

Here we are. Worshipping the process instead of focusing on results.

If we want to be truly Agile, we need to ditch the cargo cult and start trusting engineers to do their jobs.

Wouldn’t that make a refreshing change?