Agile + 20
Bryan Cantrill, Adam Leventhal, and a panel of software veterans including Tom Killalea, Tom Lyon, and Dan Cross discuss the 20-year legacy of the Agile Manifesto, arguing that while its core principles regarding customer focus are sound, the methodology has been corrupted by prescriptive 'cargo cult' rituals like rigid 2-week sprints and excessive estimation. They contrast these failures with successful implementations, such as the development of AWS S3, which utilized Agile pragmatically to provide engineers with uninterrupted focus and accountability through demos and retrospectives. The group concludes that Agile is not a silver bullet but a flexible framework that works best in high-trust environments where teams can adapt processes to their specific context rather than following dogma.