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

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