Agility is Dead, Long Live Agility!

Is agility dead?

Listening to some observers, the answer would be yes. Job offers for agile coaches are becoming rarer, large transformations attract less enthusiasm than a few years ago, and even specialized conferences seem to have lost part of their appeal¹.

For my part, I think agility is indeed dead... but only in a certain form.

Commercial agility—the kind used as a sales argument, as an unembodied competitive advantage, or as a recruitment slogan—seems to have reached its limits. It has often been sold as a universal solution capable of accelerating all projects, reducing risks, satisfying all customers, and instantly improving organizational performance.

The results observed have not always lived up to these promises.

And yet, I am convinced that the agility of action, collaboration, and value creation has never been so alive.

Even better: in a context where AI promises to considerably accelerate the realization of digital products, the founding principles of agility are becoming essential again if we want to avoid going faster... in the wrong direction.

As often sold or applied, Agility seems dead!

As a co-organizer of Agile Lyon and a regular participant in other conferences, I have the feeling that agility as it has been promoted for many years is gradually fading away.

Conferences are finding it harder to attract participants and secure funding. Companies are communicating less on the subject. Some fortunately continue to support communities and events (thanks to our Agile Lyon sponsors, by the way), but it's hard to deny that agility no longer occupies the same place in discourse as it did ten years ago.

As a coach, I also observe that agility is now taken for granted in many organizations. It is supposed to be part of the corporate culture, even when observed behaviors tell a very different story.

Finally, as a consultant on complex products, I see in some contexts a return to more control, standardization, and industrialization of practices. Teams are sometimes put back under supervision, engagement mechanisms are becoming more contractual, and room for maneuver is shrinking.

The result I observe is often the same:

• more tension;
• less accountability;
• a drop in engagement;
• a loss of meaning.

The question I ask myself is then simple: Is agility still a differentiator?

The Manifesto values undermined

I don't think the failure is that of the Agile Manifesto values.

I think rather that we have sometimes misunderstood or misapplied them.

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

How many so-called agile initiatives started with the installation of Jira, the implementation of a framework, or the adoption of a methodology like Scrum or SAFe?

We have sometimes replaced reflection on human interactions with reflection on tools.

I participate in this ecosystem myself: training, certifications, coaching, methods... We have all, at different levels, contributed to highlighting mechanics more than principles.

Yet, the initial objective was simple: to allow the people who carry the needs, business constraints, and implementation capacities to talk to each other more often and more effectively in order to make better decisions.

Working software over comprehensive documentation

This value has probably been one of the most misunderstood. It never meant "no documentation."

Documentation exists everywhere:

• in user stories;
• in requirements;
• in architecture plans;
• in the code itself when engineering practices are seriously applied.

The objective was elsewhere: to regularly have a functional product that allows validation that we are moving in the right direction.

We have sometimes reduced this value to "going fast." However, a working product is not a product developed quickly. It is a product that works.

We can move slowly while moving correctly. The important thing is to be able to regularly verify that the hypotheses on which we are building are still valid.

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

This is probably the most difficult value to implement.

Many have interpreted agility as the disappearance of framing and specification phases. However, customer expectations have never disappeared.

They still want to:

• understand what they will get;
• justify their investments;
• know the risks;
• secure their commitments.

Ambiguity appears when we simultaneously promise:

• to be able to change everything all the time;
• to know the final result precisely from the start.

Even in internal organizations, the client-provider relationship regularly reappears. Mutual reproaches persist. Tensions remain. Common ambition is sometimes lacking.

Yet it is precisely this shared ambition that should constitute the bedrock of true collaboration.

Responding to change over following a plan

This value is often understood as: "We can change our minds whenever we want." That's not what it means.

In the short term, a plan must be precise. In the medium and long term, it is more the vision that should guide decisions.

Responding to change consists of adjusting the trajectory while maintaining global consistency.

Furthermore, change is often envisioned as an addition:

• an extra feature;
• a new request;
• a new need.

More rarely as a withdrawal. Yet agility also rests on the capacity to renounce.

Every new idea should lead to a simple question: If this brings more value, what are we going to stop doing?

Disappointed sponsors…

I think the gap between promises and results largely explains the disillusionment observed today.

What was sold

Executives and sponsors often understood that agility would allow:

• going faster;
• integrating all changes;
• reducing risks;
• improving project profitability.

They expected:

• better results;
• more value;
• financial gains;
• an acceleration of their digital initiatives.

What they sometimes got

In many organizations:

• delays still exist;
• budget overruns still exist;
• conflicts between stakeholders still exist;
• quality problems still exist. Standish Group's CHAOS reports also show that a majority of projects remain either in difficulty or in failure despite the evolution of development practices².

Transformations remain disappointing: Executives don't buy a method. They buy results, and agility was not a magic recipe that could be repeated without effort.

In response, companies are tightening their budgets and aiming for minimum cost. But it seems to me that the objective is not that the budget be held, but that the budget be used wisely.

Agility as it was intended remains essential

If I remain attached to agile principles, it is because they still answer a fundamental problem:

How to spend a budget intelligently when operating in uncertainty?

Putting stakeholders at the heart of decisions allows for rapid feedback.

This feedback allows:

• validating hypotheses;
• invalidating others;
• detecting risks earlier;
• avoiding waste.

In other words: agility is above all a discipline of learning.

Values that generate value

Individuals and interactions

Discussing with users, customers, and teams allows for understanding the real problem behind a request.

A request is often an imagined solution.

A discussion allows going back to the real need.

And the real need often opens the door to simpler, less costly, and more effective solutions.

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Regularly having a usable product allows:

• validating hypotheses earlier;
• correcting errors earlier;
• discovering opportunities earlier;
• generating value earlier.

For a company that must monitor its cash flow and return on investment, this is a major advantage.

Responding to change over following a plan

Not everything imagined at the start of a project is meant to be developed.

An idea can be abandoned because:

• it no longer solves a relevant problem;
• it costs too much;
• a better opportunity has appeared.

Agility does not consist of satisfying all requests.

It consists of rigorously pursuing a value objective.

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

This value is ultimately the consequence of the three previous ones.

If we want to:

• understand users;
• learn quickly;
• adapt our decisions;

then we need a relationship based on trust rather than permanent contractual protection.

This is probably the most difficult challenge.

But it is also the one that produces the most significant benefits.

Ultimately, agility consists of putting the user's problem back at the center, rather than the solution they imagine.

Why it is more indispensable than ever in the current context

Artificial intelligence is already accelerating many activities:

• analysis;
• development;
• testing;
• documentation;
• deployment.

Several recent studies conducted at GitHub, Microsoft, Accenture, and Google observe productivity gains between 20% and more than 50% depending on the tasks studied³. And this trend will undoubtedly only accentuate.

But accelerating execution does not guarantee accelerating understanding. Producing faster does not guarantee building the right product.

On the contrary.

The faster the delivery, the greater the cost of a wrong choice can become: if we can build twice as fast but we build the wrong thing, we will simply waste more resources in a shorter time.

This is precisely where agile principles regain all their relevance, and modern Product Discovery approaches continue to consider understanding the user problem and validating hypotheses as specific activities that cannot be replaced by production acceleration alone⁴.

We need more than ever:

• discovery;
• hypothesis validation;
• assumed product decisions;
• solid engineering practices;
• regular contact with users.

Let's restore confidence to our executives and decision-makers

Agility's primary objective was never to accelerate delivery. Its objective was to reduce the cost of error.

In a context where AI strongly accelerates execution, this capacity becomes even more important. Rapidly validating with users allows:

• avoiding following a wrong trajectory;
• limiting losses;
• reallocating investments earlier.

There is also a second benefit often forgotten: putting value quickly into the hands of users allows starting to reap the benefits earlier.

The goal is therefore not to respect a budget at all costs; the goal is to use that budget intelligently.

Sometimes this means:

• stopping earlier because objectives are reached;
• abandoning a product because hypotheses were wrong;
• changing direction because a more relevant opportunity has appeared.

True performance is not absolute speed: it is the capacity to invest sustainably in what truly creates value.

What I like to find in the teams I support is ultimately quite simple:

• a clear and assumed product vision;
• a trajectory regularly questioned;
• precise short-term objectives;
• an autonomous team to find the best path.

Conclusion

Ultimately, if commercial agility is dead, it's probably excellent news.

It means:

• it will no longer serve as a meaningless marketing argument;
• its value will have to be demonstrated again;
• customers will demand more proof than promises;
• partnerships will have to be built on true shared ambition.

AI will allow us to build faster and faster.

But going faster without knowing where one is going has never been a strategy.

Like during a journey, knowing how to accelerate is useful. Knowing why one travels, where one wants to arrive, and when it is necessary to change direction is much more so.

The values of agility, the practices derived from them, and the lessons accumulated for over twenty years therefore remain deeply relevant.

So yes, maybe agility is dead.

But if that's the case, its principles have never been so alive.