In my experience, these discussions boil down to anecdotes at twenty paces.
I've seen software development done very poorly and done very well, sailing under a variety of flags. But on an eyeballing there are far more bad experiences than good that get labeled "Agile".
Whether this is because of causal differences or because it's easy to affix any label to anything (and most experiences suck regardless of the label) is hard to tell without a control-group universe were the Agile Manifesto was never written.
I have a theory here... culture beats process, but companies without the culture have to rely on process. So you’ll find that companies with the right culture can deliver better results without needing a bunch of process, but companies without the culture end up having to force it with process.
And tbh, despite how bad “Agile” process can be, it’s a lot better than pure waterfall.
Pivotal on the whole does software development as well as I've experienced. When you hit the sweetspot for our core practices it's really impressive. Everything just sort of flows.
Sometimes it goes off the rails. That is in the nature of things. But it goes off the rails as an exception, rather than as a rule.
If there's a key to the magic it's (1) hire for empathy as well as smarts and (2) reflect on what can be done better.
I've seen software development done very poorly and done very well, sailing under a variety of flags. But on an eyeballing there are far more bad experiences than good that get labeled "Agile".
Whether this is because of causal differences or because it's easy to affix any label to anything (and most experiences suck regardless of the label) is hard to tell without a control-group universe were the Agile Manifesto was never written.
If anyone needs me, I'll be counting to twenty.