Many organizations claim to be following Agile in some way. The vast majority are wrong, and most of them should not be Agile anyway.

You will recall that the Agile Manifesto, in total, is this set of four guidelines and an interpretation:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

That’s a recipe for making certain customers happy with your perpetual engagement. But:

Does your client have regulators, auditors or any other kind of external supervision on their products and services? If so, “Customer collaboration over contract negotiation” is a big problem. You can’t be successful – and therefore they cannot be successful – if the contract doesn’t explicitly spell out the restrictions and requirements.

Agile is a great approach to a marketing website – again, as long as the content passes any necessary compliance reviews – but a terrible way to run an industrial process.

Is your client committed to 24/7 operations, or facing a huge cost for unexpected downtime? “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools” may not be right for you. “Responding to change over following a plan” might not be the right approach, either.

Hrm. I’ve been blogging for ten years now. Maybe I should get some sleep.