I doubt steve over at Google sees really how google constructed their agile empire. I doubt some of you got my Army of darkness reference, but if you did... sweet.

Good agile, bad agile... this reminds me of something someone said to me in an elevator the other day. "James, just remember, it's not your agile, it's <insert specific high up person's name here>'s agile".

I found both of these statements dubiously irritating because, there is only 1 agile

Sure, there's the profiteers out there trying to make a buck on it.

Why shouldn't they though?

Agile needs their community just as bad as waterfall does.

When it all comes down to it... there's really 2 simple abstractions in 'things you do to make software'

Those are:
Project management Practices

and

Engineering Practices.

If you look at the very very core of google, you'll probably see a very lightweight organization who has the core agile values and a very good metric on measuring both sides of the 'agile fence' (left side versus right side) so that they can make a call as to whether you're being "Agile" or being "other".

Scrum works. Really it does.

Organizations usually do not.

In fact Ken Schwaber says that only 35% of organizations who attempt to adopt scrum will succeed.

I can see that especially true in most places who see IT development as a cost center rather than a revenue stream. So long as they treat it as such, it will continue to be as such.

Scrum takes a certain dedication to do what's profitable, to seeing employees making their own decisions, and letting cards fall where they may. For organizations whose goal is something other than engineering, they find it hard to trust IT enough to allow them such freedoms.

You see, there's two types of adoptions of scrum that work in my opinion.

One is a bottom-up. The employees on the team see great value in it, make connections with their real product owners and use scrum to deliver great software. They get noticed. The company picks it up and runs with it.

The second is a top-down. The company uses a very strong executive sponsor in a special project that chooses to use scrum, trains all of the employees in how it works, then they use scrum to do software. If it succeeds, they go through the rest of the organization adopting it one team at a time. (alternatively, they go all-in)

Which are you in?