Agile is an iterative methodology, but all iterative methodologies are not agile.
That said, The combination of lean, scrum, iterative development, and infrastructure as code and cloud replacing dedicated operations teams "won." That's currently called "agile" but is a subset of the original vision.
Well yes, because there's also a product development side to the original vision.
That said, though, what does need to die are the online flamewars about what is or isn't "true Agile," because the true north star is delivering quality software faster in order to realize a business need.
We can go down philosophical rabbit holes about "true Agile" all day long, but in the words of Manfred von Richthofen, "all else is rubbish."
"Agile" is not a methodology, it is a collection of techniques and methodologies which have similar characteristics. The people who signed the Agile Manifesto all had their own frameworks (including Scrum); they just were trying to find out what they had in common.
And everyone also seems to have this pie-in-the-sky view of the manifesto whereby nothing on the right exists or matters . . . that's not what that means. You still have processes and tools. You still have documentation. You still have contracts. You still follow a plan. You're just not handcuffed by these things unnecessarily or having them force you to do stupid things.
Iterative development is Royce's "Waterfall" model. It long predates Agile.
Agile is about eliminating management in favour of self-organizing teams. Hence how we ended up with all these tools (standups, Jira, etc.) to try and help developers do the work that managers would normally do.
Although, frankly, I'm not sure Agile ever happened. What we got instead were managers trying to force developers to use tools intended for self-organizing teams, but still with managers and without self-organization, and everyone suffering from the impedance mismatch.
Now that we're in a new age of higher interest rates, managers are realizing that, if they want to keep their jobs, they'd be best get back to doing the work themselves rather than trying to pass the work off to others. The passing of the buck is what we're seeing the death of.
> Agile is about eliminating management in favour of self-organizing teams.
Yeah . . . no. The biggest mistake the Agile movement ever made was sidelining management and claiming they were irrelevant. You can't do any kind of work at scale without some layer of management and coordination. OK, sure, there's the pie-in-the-sky dream that every company will be able to swarm on problems and self-organize at every level. But that's not feasible in the majority of cases.
The correct answer is to manage correctly by recognizing the professional expertise of people doing the work and giving them latitude to come up with creative solutions as opposed to dictating everything. But companies have CEOs and boards to set the overall direction of the organization, and that's reality as opposed to some anarcho-capitalistic pie in the sky.
Was it supposed to be? The Twelve Principles makes it very clear that you need extra special people to have any chance. It was clearly never meant for everyone. It literally says so.
Perhaps our biggest mistake was thinking that we are special?
> The Twelve Principles makes it very clear that you need extra special people to have any chance.
Nonsense. If anything, the failure is on leadership for not adapting and growing their people. There are three kinds of people in any organization: the rockstars who will naturally excel, the incompetent who should be fired, and the vast middle whose success is a factor of leadership and seniors putting effort into their growth and development.
Again, Agile has no specific leadership. It is a model, for lack of a better word, for self-organizing teams where all participants are the same as all others. It is lead by the shared collective of all taking part. That's its while deal.
That very well may be an unrealistic deal[1], sure. There is probably good reason why Agile never happened, instead seeing management cherry-picking from a a bastardized version of its idea to lighten their workload. But you cannot meaningly remove what it is as it seems you are trying to do. If you do, it no longer exists.
[1] In fact, I posit that it was written under "Agile Manifesto" to purposely draw parallels with the "Communist Manifesto". Communism isn't meant to be realistic either. It is a sci-fi look into what life could be like if we achieve post-scarcity. Agile is similar in vein – a look into what life could be like if everyone became excessively driven high achievers; not meant to be a reflection of this world.
