zx
Generative AI removes the natural constraint that expensive engineers imposed on software development. When building costs almost nothing, the question shifts from “can we build it?” to “should we build it?” The Agile Manifesto’s principles provide the discipline that these costs used to enforce. Ignore them at your peril when Ralph Wiggum meets Agile.
AI agents have long promised productivity gains, but until now, they demanded coding skills that most agile practitioners lack or are uncomfortable with. In this article, I share my first impressions on how Claude Cowork removes that barrier, why it is a watershed moment, and how you could integrate AI Agents into your work as an agile practitioner.
The A3 Framework categorizes AI delegation before you prompt: Assist (AI drafts, you actively review and decide), Automate (AI executes under explicit rules and audit cadences), or Avoid (stays entirely human when failure would damage trust or relationships). Most AI training teaches better prompting. The A3 Framework teaches the prior question: Should you be prompting at all? Categorize first, then prompt.
Without a decision system, every task you delegate to AI is a gamble on your credibility and your place in your organization’s product model. AI4Agile’s A3 Framework addresses this with three categories: what to delegate, what to supervise, and what to keep human.
Learn more about what is coming in Q1 of 2026.
Organizations resist change through immune responses: encapsulation, assimilation, exhaustion, redefinition, and expulsion. But immune systems attack what they recognize. Hence, if you are in the business of change and expect push-back, stop announcing transformations. Instead, to overcome the immunity response, start solving problems: The principles spread through practice, through demonstrations of value, not by proclamation.
This article is Part 3 of a three-part series. In Part 1, Agile Is Dead, Long Live Agility, we saw how the Agile brand became toxic while the principles spread faster than ever under different names. In Part 2, The Reformation That Became the Church, we traced how every disruptive movement hardens into the orthodoxy it opposed.
This final part answers the question we left open: Can you practice the principles without the apparatus? Yes. But only if you understand why organizations reject change and how to stop triggering that rejection.
The Agile Manifesto followed Luther’s Reformation arc: radical simplicity hardened into scaling frameworks, transformation programs, and debates about what counts as “real Agile.” Learn to recognize when you’re inside the orthodoxy and how to practice the principles without the apparatus.
This is Part 2 of a three-part series; check out Part 1: Agile Is Dead, Long Live Agility.
Your LinkedIn feed is full of it: Agile is dead. They’re right. And, at the same time, they’re entirely wrong.
The word is dead. The brand is almost toxic in many circles; check the usual subreddits. But the principles? They’re spreading faster than ever. They just dropped the name that became synonymous with consultants, certifications, transformation failures, and the enforcement of rituals.
You all know organizations that loudly rejected “Agile” and now quietly practice its core ideas more effectively than any companies running certified transformation programs. The brand failed. The ideas won.
So why are we still fighting about the label?
Your Agile events aren’t failing because people lack training. They’re failing because your organization adopted the rituals while rejecting the transparency, trust, and adaptation that make them work. And often, the dysfunction of mechanical ceremonies isn’t a bug. It’s a feature.
Leadership resistance to your pre-mortem reveals whether your organization’s operating model prioritizes comfortable narratives over preventing failure. This article shows you how to diagnose cultural dysfunction and decide which battles to fight.
The public Scrum training market is shrinking, while demand for self-paced AI and Product courses is growing among agile practitioners. Consequently, I will shift toward online courses on AI for Agile and Product Operating Models in 2026. And I will rejuvenate the Agile Camp Berlin in the summer of 2026. Learn more about what is in the pipeline.
