What institutions do to successful ideas

Many critiques of Agile assume something went wrong. The story is usually told as a fall from grace: a practical response to software uncertainty that then disappeared beneath ceremonies, certifications, frameworks, and consultants. There is another way to read the same history. Perhaps Agile did not fail. Perhaps it s…

June 4, 2026 · 5 min
Quadrant mapping uncertainty against consequence, with adaptation favoured at high uncertainty and anticipation at high consequence

Agile, where it fits and where it doesn't

Most engineering disciplines accept that method follows from context. Nobody expects a bridge engineer, a documentary director, and a trauma surgeon to share a planning model, and nobody finds the difference remarkable. Software is one of the few fields where people go looking for a single methodology and then try to a…

June 4, 2026 · 5 min

How a rebellion became a bureaucracy

Few movements in software have been as successful as Agile. What began as a reaction against heavyweight process, exhaustive documentation, and centralised planning became the dominant way organisations talk about building software. And somewhere in that success it acquired certifications, prescribed ceremonies, maturi…

June 4, 2026 · 4 min