> I think Agile is (was?), in the end, yet another attempt to make software development behave like other areas of engineering -- a domain in which processes can be trusted over people, and in which a certain set of predictable inputs will reliably produce an assured set of outputs.
No, Agile is exactly the opposite of that: the first value statement of the Agile Manifesto is "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools"
The problem is that Agile -- outside of the highly-skilled, highly-motivated, groups that initiated it -- is often a term that the kind of people who are looking for a process that they can trust over people have heard about working without understanding what it means, and so they look for someone to sell them a guide to applying this thing called agile which they imagine to be a canned process, and there are plenty of people willing to cater to that demand and preconception by selling canned processes as "agile" to people expecting canned processes that have some vague awareness of the term "agile" without understanding of its meaning.
So many, many venues are implementing some canned process, often defined externally to the organization (the most common, but far from the only, version being Scrum) and valuing strict adherence to its ritual over individuals and their interactions, and believe that by doing so they are "doing Agile" -- and so in the marketplace (though not among people who are more thoughtful and knowledgable) "Agile" has essentially lost all substantive meaning.
A little history, folks. The Agile Manifesto is 2001. Scrum is 1995. Extreme Programming is 1996. ASD is 1997.
Easy enough to say that you're valuing "individuals and interactions over processes and tools" after detailing methods and processes that do not set forth this idea at all. Agile (in these earlier formations) was all about processes and tools.
Telling me that these formations (in which agile is effectively invented) is "not the true Agile," is like telling someone that the reason they don't like Lisp is because they have not meditated long enough on the Lambda Nature.
No, Agile is exactly the opposite of that: the first value statement of the Agile Manifesto is "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools"
The problem is that Agile -- outside of the highly-skilled, highly-motivated, groups that initiated it -- is often a term that the kind of people who are looking for a process that they can trust over people have heard about working without understanding what it means, and so they look for someone to sell them a guide to applying this thing called agile which they imagine to be a canned process, and there are plenty of people willing to cater to that demand and preconception by selling canned processes as "agile" to people expecting canned processes that have some vague awareness of the term "agile" without understanding of its meaning.
So many, many venues are implementing some canned process, often defined externally to the organization (the most common, but far from the only, version being Scrum) and valuing strict adherence to its ritual over individuals and their interactions, and believe that by doing so they are "doing Agile" -- and so in the marketplace (though not among people who are more thoughtful and knowledgable) "Agile" has essentially lost all substantive meaning.