[sime2009]

The rarely discussed cornerstone of Agile is trusting the team and letting them organise themselves. For most organisation this represents a huge internal change in power structure.

The Agile industrial complex can't really sell a message to their customers (i.e. managers) that the development teams should have the power and run themselves how they feel fit. This message amounts to "if this works, we can fire the managers". Not a popular message for managers.

So, instead of building on an agile foundation, companies just add some story points and funny sounding meetings on top of the old structure and nothing really changes. It is Agile cosplay.

[pitched]

I’ll take this a step further too and say that if Agile is being introduced by management, it means they don’t trust their teams to organize themselves. Agile, as sold, can’t actually work in that environment. The battle is already lost.

[sime2009]

That's right. It can't be pushed down from above. The team has to want to do this and take the power.

A manager can start work on this kind of culture shift without even saying the word "agile". They need to give their teams more trust and room to govern themselves. i.e. managers need to get out of the way. When a team is open to the idea of Agile or scrum, then the manager could ask the team if they would like training or coaching. But the ground has to be made fertile first.