Agile is Dead?

Lots of rhetoric out there about how agile is dead or people splitting hairs on what the word actually means. I know there is an industry built around it and I am part of it, but are we loosing sight of what's important?

agile definition: "the ability to move quickly and easily".

Organizations (now more than ever) need to act on that as a descriptor for how they serve their customers. If they don't, customers will find another provider that will; it's inevitable.

Very few industries exist today where organizations can rest on their success and not adapt to newer ways of working. Even more important, generations of workers have different values and principles about how they approach work.

Humans are amazingly resilient, adaptable, and gifted. We learn more about ourselves each day and we are the ones guiding the complex work now (maybe not in the future).

Organizations should be designed around optimizing for the delivery of the product to the customer, taking into account how the work is being performed (if by humans, we need to pay attention to create cultures that foster their skills).

Focus on the last word of the definition of agile. If we can make things easier for the organization, the people working in it, and the customers; speed will quickly follow.

Too many people adopt agile to go faster. To me, that's the problem. Adopt it as a way to continually improve. It isn't faster in the short-term (usually). It's a harder way to work.

Loosing weight is harder than gaining weight, but the reward is so much better. Organizations need to loose the weight of waste and overhead so they can move faster, what is wrong with that?

Call it what you want. I might just start calling it "healthy".