Has Agile (XP, Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, etc…) – "Jumped the Shark"?

Hi everyone,

This is the first time I’m mentioning it here, but a good friend and colleague of mine do a periodic podcast on agile topics. His name is and we’ve been doing it together since we both worked as agile coaches at Teradata…way back in 2009.

It’s called the and we’ve recorded about 50+ pod-casts to date on all sorts of agile centric topics. I mention it as a reference for some of you out there. Yeah, I know, it sounds a bit self-serving. But I like to think each podcast does share some hard-fought learning from two folks who are on their “agile journey”.

Jumping the Shark

So back to the title. In one of our Meta-casts, Josh brought up this question:

To be honest, I had no idea what he was talking about. I had never heard of the expression. But you know what, it’s defined on .

The point seems to be, have the agile methods evolved too far?. Have they:

  • run their course?
  • gotten away from the very things that made them successful in the beginning?
  • lost track of their original mission, vision, and value proposition?
  • is ScrumBut and all of the agile variations indicators of the phenomenon?
  • and is the surfacing of the Scaling Frameworks: SAFe, DAD, LESS, and Agility Path simply extensions that are moving us away from the “basics”?

Wrapping up – What do you think?

I wanted to put this question out there and see how folks respond. Please resply via comments to this post or simply send them to me via email: bgalen@velocitypartners.net

In either case, I’m wondering if you think we’ve Jumped the Shark. And if you think we have, is it possible to “jump back” to basics and “recover”?

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

Reference to photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fonzie_jumps_the_shark.PNG

Bob Galen

Bob Galen

Bob Galen is an Agile Methodologist, Practitioner & Coach based in Cary, NC. In this role he helps guide companies and teams in their pragmatic adoption and organizational shift towards Scrum and other agile methodologies and practices. Contact: bob@rgalen.com