I hear a lot these days: “agile is over, it’s dead”, and I’m curious: has the world become much more predictable during my vacation? Have we found a way to innovate without allowing the right to fail? Would it finally be possible to optimize our work with very unhappy people?

Naturally not.

It’s just that as often happens, we’ve slapped the word “agile” on a team, a department, etc. without really taking two things into account. The first, the more minor one, giving ourselves the practical means to implement it, the second, much more important, understanding its thinking, its culture. (The first is minor because it’s the form, the second is the substance, the substance will drive the form).

It probably came from good intentions: a desire for change, for revival. The novelty of agility, its playful aspect and the obvious common sense it demonstrates, attracts a lot of interest. So much the better.

In short, we seize upon it, and that’s good.

But often it doesn’t go any further. Or rather it doesn’t go far enough. I see teams in disarray. Well anyway, it’s always the same question. Without knowing why we want to do things, we do them poorly, we become frustrated and we reject. We don’t know what we’re rejecting but we reject it, this agile thing. It failed. But what failed? If you would just articulate what failed and what the pursued goal was. If with full knowledge you would analyze your involvement in pursuing that goal, and the means you gave it.

Agile is a word that says: the world has become complex. Complexity is the acceptance of uncertainty and contradictions. To overcome these uncertainties and these contradictions, we must empower people, and have feedback, transparency, communication, the right to fail (ideally within time intervals that limit its scope), etc.

Call it whatever you want, agile hasn’t disappeared, and won’t disappear anytime soon. Perhaps the word will disappear, not what it conveys.