This article touches on some ideas about developer psychology also present in David Maister's book Managing the Professional Service Firm: basically that many professionals, whether in IT or law/accounting/consulting/engineering/etc, share a desire for excellence, recognition, and autonomy. There is a lot more in that book that applies very well to programmers, in my opinion.
I also like the point about being skeptical of named development processes. The ancient writer Galen advised learning from all the schools of philosophy but belonging to none of them. I take the same approach to software development methodologies. The only risk there I think is that "agile" becomes just another name for chaos. If you have pathological culture, it might be better to pick a named process (any one!) and adopt it. But if people are "humane", that is hopefully not necessary.
I also like the point about being skeptical of named development processes. The ancient writer Galen advised learning from all the schools of philosophy but belonging to none of them. I take the same approach to software development methodologies. The only risk there I think is that "agile" becomes just another name for chaos. If you have pathological culture, it might be better to pick a named process (any one!) and adopt it. But if people are "humane", that is hopefully not necessary.