[trevoragilbert]

Whenever I read about why Agile is bad and then the inevitable comments about how "no, Agile is good, it's just [company/business people/project managers/etc.] implemented it wrong," I'm struck with the similarity of "no, Communism isn't bad it's just that no one has really done it yet."

[taylodl]

I've worked for several different companies and several different teams since "Agile" was developed. What I can say is "Agile" doesn't exist: I haven't even seen two teams within the same company doing Agile the same way and referring to the same thing when they say they're doing "Agile."

All "Agile" means at this time is you're not likely to be doing Waterfall, though I'm an old fart and remember Waterfall and I can tell you there are teams saying they're "Agile" and they're actually doing Waterfall. "Agile" is a meaningless word.

[bunderbunder]

And it fails for pretty much the same reason Marx's ideas failed: it may sound like a harmonious utopia on paper, but in practice the whole thing is inherently brittle and unstable and immediately collapses into a maximally malevolent perversion of itself upon contact with humans' tendency to behave like humans, like the sociological equivalent of a prion disease.

[taylodl]

Agile tends to fail because all-too-often the team's attention turns to the pomp and ceremony of "Agile" over getting the work done. I've met teams that believe they can wave their magic Agile wand and make the work go away. They tend to get a bit upset when I point out doing that work is your job.

[the_af]

> And it fails for pretty much the same reason Marx's ideas failed

It should be noted that Marx's ideas didn't fail, insomuch as most of his work is a (debatable, but not non-sensical) description of capitalism and its problems.

Maybe you meant some of his predictions, or the future society implementations of other people calling themselves Marxists?

Agile, regrettably, mostly did fail to live up to its promises.