> But do you know how Agile was invented? It was a group of software developers, tired of heavy management processes, who came together to decide how to make their processes lightweight.

Agile is agile the same way the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea is a democracy. And like most dictatorships with these names, I’m sure they also have a founding myth that claims a genuine concern for Democracy and the People.

Software developers are concerned with developing software. The people with the time and energy to develop and sell methodologies like Agile are not in the business of developing software; they’re in the business of selling methodologies. Maybe they’re consultants trying to sell clients on the methodology as a selling point for their consultancy (much of Agile seems geared to this), or maybe they’re trying to train people to be Certified Scrum Masters or whatever. Either way, you can’t actually sell people a methodology that boils down to reducing methodology because then you have nothing to sell.

I know I sound cynical, but the reality is that human behavior is driven by incentives and anyone who genuinely cared about making processes lightweight has little incentive to hang around the Agile scene fighting with the grifters.