[edudobay]

I feel that what the author has described is the very opposite of agile.

This article has some fair points on bloated companies, useless meetings and rituals, guesswork-based products, and I wouldn't dare to estimate how many companies could fit into this description, but agile proposes just the opposite (I'd call that "conscious agile").

Even if you read the Scrum guide, you'll see that it does not prescribe most of the things that are commonly attributed to it. Many of these canned practices come from taking things out of context, or from a misunderstanding of the reasoning behind the Agile or Scrum principles.

[yakshaving_jgt]

Isn't that the problem though? Every discussion about problems with Agile are met with retorts like "but that's not real Agile!"

At this point, I believe the common understand of Agile, warts and all, is Agile. It doesn't matter what was in the manifesto. Agile is daily standups. Sprints. Retrospectives. Jira. Scrum. Overpaid and incompetent consultants or "coaches". Meeting "facilitators". Development phases. Release cycles. Jira plugins. PHBs. Bill Lumbergh.

[pydry]

It means that but it also means the opposite. There isnt really a common understanding there are several.

The problem is that it was always a vague pseudoreligious thing that would help the consultants sell their wares. If they'd been specific about what they meant that would have made it harder for everybody to project their desires on to it.

[MathMonkeyMan]

Those communist regimes weren't communist at all!

It's true, though. If the tenet is "keep customer/user feedback cycles small and frequent," then some side-effects are "frequent meetings, small deliverables, and dedicated task management roles." Corporate structures then eat that stuff up. It has nothing to do with the tenet.

Similarly, (and I'm reaching here) if the tenet is "centrally shared resources and profits," then some side-effects are "a few people (can) control the administration that owns everything." Despotic structures then eat that stuff up.