alt Hacker NewsWhat is the chance that you've perfectly captured every aspect of the situation that led to success? Versus, what is the chance that you were lucky enough to be in situations where a multitude of factors, both appreciated and unappreciated, combined to lead to success?
There are a million possible reasons for failure, but here is a very easy one: It doesn't matter how good you feel about the development process, if the company has the wrong objective. You will still end up being frustrated, and failing. Of course this will have all sorts of pathological and uncomfortable ramifications.
So while it is easy to say, "just act this way and you'll have success". You're not actually appreciating all the hidden elements that allow any hope of acting that way. You've been lucky enough to be in situations where it happened to work (ie. the rain dance made rain), but that does not mean it's actually representative, or that the prescription actually captures the critical information needed to ensure success for other people. Instead, you've described a rain dance.
You're right - there isn't one way to do things or one way that always works. There are issues that are outside a team's control, for example, that make it an impossible struggle. If you're rigidly forced to do something and cannot adapt then you're ... not really agile. But you have to understand why you're doing what you're doing and keep adjusting to see what works for you.
#1 IMO is that if the company you're in is non-agile in its general attitude, which is influenced by its own customers, then everything is geared against you.
That isn't to say that something like Kanban might not be usable or better than no plan at all but certainly scrum is not some universal solution.