The end of Agile : Forbes Article: What are your thoughts?

1. Do you think it is right to see agile project management (and umbrella of other tools) as Task Management System (TMS) or Methodologies?  

No. Although Kanban comes close

 Do you think Agile Methodologies or even Scrum for that matter are used in this manner in most of the organizations?

Yes. The hardest part of implementing scrum in an organization is the change the organization has to go through itself. For that matter, many organizations try to keep their "old" way of working in place, and lean on them strongly. True Agile adoptation can most of the time only been found if the organization as a whole will change. Otherwise it is old school PM, made look good and shiny on the surface

Isn't it the responsibility of a Scrum Master along with the PO to understand, navigate and manage the gap between strategic goals and product delivery?

No, surely not the SM. The PO maybe, depending on the organization structure, but in my view, the PO is responsible for value delivery and understanding the goals of the business, but it is the organization which should navigate and accomodate

Do you encourage the vision where Scrum is seen as a complete circular supply chain (where the product is not just delivered but also the knowledge gained is utilized for the same product or as an organizational asset)? If not, why?  

Not clear on the question. But in general, a Scrum team being knowledgeable on the product is absolutely a huge benifit. They can understand business goals and whishes better, translate them into features better. But most of it all, Scrum is about gathering user insights / feedback as early and often as possible, the continuous inspect & adapt cycle, so in that sence, Scrum is completely about that!

Is it a common misconception that agile does not scale well (if you understand it well and then implement into the culture)?

Scrum scales well, and the opposite is indeed a misconception. In any form or shape, scaling comes with problems and challenges. So those faces in Scrum are not different than other frameworks or methodologies. They are always there and needs to be resolved. There are multiples ways to scale, SAFe, Nexus, etc, it all works if you implement and fit it properly.

All 'n all: Scrum or Agile is not the future persé. It is a huge improvement on the "old"way of working, and it evolves. It might as well evolve into something completely new, with a new name. 

I think it would be a good thing if in 10 years we can look back and say: Agile, we've been there, it has a been a good step forward, but what we do now is so much better... do you remember we were thinking that Agile was all that? Whahaha, Look at us now ;) (a bit as how we look at traditional PM now ;))

I think about a week later, Forbes doubled-back and a different author wrote about how Agile is not dead.

In almost all cases, it is usually cheaper (if not necessarily always better from an organization standpoint) to buy off the shelf software, even when the sticker prices are high.   The reason for that is simple - the functionality you are looking for already exists, and the price for the pain of building the application the first (several) times has been paid.

The author of this statement is arguing a blatantly incorrect premise.

To suggest that almost all software development is basically "done" is laughable.   

I would state the exact opposite, that in almost all cases, the software being developed is innovative, and does not exist as an off-the-shelf option.

I would state the exact opposite, that in almost all cases, the software being developed is innovative, and does not exist as an off-the-shelf option.

I like the wording of off-the-shelf. A little while ago, I had this discussion with Gunther Verheyen.We were talking about the future of Agile. Agile is being hyped into tremendous hights, different frameworks pop up and quality-wise there is a broad spread of training and "experts" on the subject.  Somewhere down the line the companies that have adobted any kind of agile practice in a wrong way due to x reason (bad training, fail to adjust culture/mindset, etc) will blaim Agile and will ditch it again. Need to reinvent. And that's where I think organizations will start to look more into themselves. What DOES work here? And try it like Spotify. Start with Scrum and organically evolve to fit their needs over implementing a "best practice/off-the-shelf" framework.

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I don't think that the author completely understands what agile means. My first clue to this was that every time the word agile is used in his article it is capitalized (Agile).  Agile should only be capitalized when it is the first word in a sentence.  

A lot of what he claims are reasons for the end of agile are actually the very things that help a company be agile.  A company is agile when it is takes the time to inspect situations and make a decision based on the information it has.  A company is agile when it is able to react to changing conditions in a time frame that prevents harm. 

I read this article when it was first published and I reread it before I started this post.  Both times I read I had this statement running through my head the entire time.  "This guy really doesn't understand what he is trying to discuss." The entire opening scenario about hockey sticks made me cringe. Not because of the hockey sticks or his failed attempt at humor, but because the team seems more concerned about tracking their progress than planning their work. And the Scrum Master is nothing but a Project Manager.  He makes statements about the Agile Manifesto that shows he doesn't understand the reason for it's creation and the intent behind the statements contained in it.  His closing statements about agile not being appropriate for data projects are not valid in any way in my opinion. In fact my previous employer took 10 different databases and created a data lake, data repositories, and data reporting systems using 2 week sprints with 2 different Scrum Teams in a total of 4 months. They started by writing their own code but determined about 1/3 way into the effort that they would be better off buying an "off the shelf" product that could be used for all of the back end data manipulation and cleansing. They switched their methods and delivered more than was originally thought possible. 

I realize that this is his opinion and everyone is entitled to their own opinions. Case in point the stuff I'm typing here.  But he doesn't seem to be open to other's opinions and has a closed view about the things he feels are right.  I'm going to bet that everyone one that has ever visited, read, posted in these forums could pretty easily come up with at least 3 ideas of how to help the hockey stick team.  And if that scenario had been posted here, all of us would share our ideas and welcome the discussion from others.  

I will say that I agree with him that Agile is almost dead.  But I am thrilled about that because Agile should never have existed and was created by people trying to cash in on people's/company's misguided interpretations.  But corporate agility is not going to die and in fact it will become even more important as time moves on.  

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