Oh boy, could I give a good rant about how we're seriously screwing up Agile. In fact, I did -- http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2010/09/agile-ruined-...

But as bad as the average Agile adoption is, I disagree with the author. Let's take each of his points:

Companies are “doing agile” Yes. As an example, last year I had a huge manufacturing company (which I will not name) ask me to come in to help as an Agile coach. It was a weird gig -- no teams, no traction, just a couple of guys in an office somewhere. It took me a while, but I finally figured out what they wanted. They wanted an "Agile Expert" to help them rewrite all the processes so they could be Agile! To them, it was top-down, create and monitor the process, etc. This was a control game, and they just wanted an imprimatur for the whole thing so they could gain more control.

So you might think that I would agree with this point, but I do not. The reason is the same reason why these guys brought me on: Agile is being implemented from the ground-up whether companies like it or not. The natives are restless, developers are seeing the difference, and change continues to happen. Most of this top-down stuff you see is more a reaction to that than anything else. So yes, the guy in the top office is trying to take a big hammer and "do" Agile like he did everything else, but the guys on the shop floor are doing their best to do it the right way, no matter what.

The business and development divide has grown...we now have project managers as ScrumMasters. Yes we do in many places, but not always. Lots of teams are doing it different ways. I think you could look a this either way, depending on your personal experience. When I wrote a blog article last week about rotating the ScrumMaster role among different folks in the team (http://tiny-giant-books.com/blog/scrummasters-get-no-respect...) I had one CST come by and say basically "That's not a good thing. I've never seen it done like that!" But I also had a few people email me and thank me for bringing it up. It varies.

We can’t even appear as a united front. This is a biggie, but it's a feature, not a bug. Remember: Agile is not like Scrum. Scrum has a certification process and an ivory tower where you go and get blessed. Agile is just best practices for iterative and incremental development. It's a superset of Scrum, sure, but don't mix them up. Because it's best practices, there's a lot of conflict out there. But that's great! Give me a dozen different options and opinions, let's talk it out, and then I can make an informed decision. The noise is a good thing. People get mad because Agile seems so slippery. One guy said, "It's almost like 'whatever works the best' is then just called Agile." Yes! Exactly! It's changing as we continue to try new things and share more.

So cheer up! I'm starting to hear from companies that want to use Agile for all of their business processes, not just technology development. Eric Ries is doing an awesome job of taking Agile/Lean ideas into the startup world. I'm so optimistic I even spent a few weeks putting down my best thoughts for how to start your team on the best foot. (http://amzn.to/xUgFxL) I wouldn't have done that if I didn't think the market was out there for it.

I think Agile adoption is always going to suck -- but it's just because of the nature of trying to get large numbers of people to think differently. If your experience with Agile adoption sucks, it's probably because you are working in a place where a lot of things suck. That's a much bigger problem than just Agile.