How Agile Destroyed Software Development—And How We Fix It
Agile was supposed to be the savior of software development. Instead, it has become one of its biggest obstacles. The original principles of Agile, flexibility, collaboration, and iterative & incremental delivery, have been distorted into rigid frameworks, bureaucratic nonsense, and a system that caters more to business stakeholders than to the developers delivering solutions.
So how did we get here? More importantly, how do we get out?
The Software Development Crisis That Started It All
Let's rewind to the 1990s. Software development was in crisis. It took years—literally years—to deliver a single piece of working software. By the time a project was finished, the business had moved on, market conditions had changed, and the software was obsolete before it even launched. The traditional, legacy Waterfall approach, which required teams to map out every possible requirement before writing a single line of code and delivering after it was completely done, simply couldn't keep up.
Then came the Agile Manifesto in 2001. It changed everything. It introduced a new way of thinking: adaptability, collaboration, and speed over rigid planning, documentation, and bureaucracy. It moved the industry away from Waterfall SDLC. And it worked—initially. Teams using the Agile principles of the manifesto started shipping working software faster, responding to customer needs in real-time, and breaking free from the suffocating constraints of traditional project management.
The problem? Somewhere along the way, we lost the plot.
Where It All Went Wrong
Agile is not the problem. The problem is what Agile has become—a dogmatic, process-heavy system that completely contradicts the values it is built on.
Let's go back to the fundamentals and compare what Agile should be versus what it actually is today.
1. Individuals and Interactions Over Processes and Tools
What this meant: High-performing teams work best when they collaborate, hold each other accountable, and trust one another. Processes and tools should exist to enable good work, not get in the way of it.
What we got instead: Agile has been hijacked by frameworks like Scrum, SAFe®, Kanban, and LeSS, which have turned development into a game of ceremonies, ticket tracking, and velocity reporting. Teams spend more time managing Jira boards, filling out burndown charts, and sitting in pointless meetings than they do actually writing code.
2. Working Software Over Comprehensive Documentation
What this meant: Deliver small, working increments of software quickly so users can test, give feedback, and guide future development.
What we got instead: Teams are drowning in backlogs, refinement sessions, and sprint planning meetingsbefore they even build anything. Many teams still get locked into long, rigid development cycles, meaning software is delivered months later—not in real-time as the manifesto intended.
The irony? Waterfall at least gave you comprehensive documentation. What we have now is just slow, bloated Agile with less documentation. If teams take months to build something, they should document it properlyinstead of pretending it's Agile.
3. Customer Collaboration Over Contract Negotiation
What this meant: Developers and stakeholders should work together to shape the product. Frequent feedback loops ensure that teams build the right thing for the right person at the right time, not just what was imagined in a planning session months ago.
What we got instead: Product Managers coming in with pre-written requirements and expecting teams just to estimate and execute. Instead of defining problems and collaborating on solutions, development teams are handed a list of demands. Engineers are rarely given the space to challenge assumptions, push back on bad ideas, or influence product direction.
The best teams I've seen do things differently. They collaborate early. They don't waste time arguing over scope—they build something and test it. They embrace iteration instead of getting stuck in requirement hell.
4. Responding to Change Over Following a Plan
What this meant: Stop trying to predict the future. Build small, adapt, iterate. Plans should be flexible, not written in stone.
What we got instead: Quarterly planning. Annual roadmaps. Leadership teams trying to "lock in" scope months in advance as if software development works like factory production. And then we wonder why teams miss deadlines.
Here's the truth: the further out you try to plan, the more likely you are to be wrong. The best teams don't stick to a rigid plan—they continuously adapt. They cut scope when needed. They change direction based on real-world feedback, not a slide deck from last quarter's leadership meeting.
Why Scrum, SAFe, and Modern Agile Are Failing Developers
At this point, you might be thinking, "But Scrum and SAFe® are based on Agile principles! So, what's the problem?" The problem is that they were designed to cater to business stakeholders, not developers.
Scrum, SAFe®, and similar frameworks were created so that managers could "understand" Agile and feel like they had control. They introduced story points, velocity tracking, burndown charts, and endless ceremonies:things that make Agile look structured on a PowerPoint® slide but completely miss the point of the original manifesto.
Some of the biggest problems?
Story points have become a meaningless game. Instead of being a tool for developers to discuss complexity, they're now used to measure "team performance" and forecast delivery dates—something they were never designed for.
Retrospectives rarely drive change. Teams complain about issues, but nothing gets prioritized to fix them. Instead, retros become a safe space for venting before going right back to business as usual.
Breaking work into "increments" has become Waterfall in disguise. Most of the time, these increments don't even get deployed to users—they just get added to an internal staging environment (or worse, remain in a QA environment) for another round of refinement, leading to the same slow delivery cycles, Agile was meant to eliminate.
The result? Agile is now just another bureaucracy. And instead of improving software development, it has made things worse.
How Do We Fix Agile?
If we want to fix Agile, we must burn the rulebook and return to first principles.
Stop obsessing over process. If your team spends more time in meetings than actually building software, you're doing it wrong. Cut the noise and focus on what actually helps teams deliver. Scrum events are great and are all a delivery team needs; stop adding additional non-value add meetings.
Empower Developers to own the process. Developers understand the technical constraints and trade-offs better than anyone. If your Agile process doesn't let them have a say, it's broken.
Get real software in front of users as fast as possible. Ship smaller, fully working tested increments, get customer feedback earlier, and stop waiting until "everything is ready."
Treat Agile as a mindset, not a framework. The original Agile principles were about adaptability and collaboration—not following a set of rigid rules.
Throw out deadlines and focus on outcomes. Deadlines in software are almost always wrong. If you need time estimates, fine!; but the focus should be on delivering the right thing, the right way, not hitting an arbitrary date.
At its core, Agile was never meant to be about processes, ceremonies, or frameworks. It was about building better software faster by eliminating the nonsense that slows teams down.
If your version of Agile is making that harder, it's time to change it.
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