The ongoing thread about whether is always/sometimes/not always/never/whatever
"right" for a given environment seems to me to be missing something rather
important. It seems to be based on the assumption that "agile" is some
particular thing that we can talk about unambiguously.

It isn't.

Agile started as a coming-together of a few pretty smart developers, each having
their own peculiar way of writing software. It was a definition of common ground
among folks with rather different approaches. It still is today.

So, it seems to me that we can talk rather precisely about whether XP or Scrum
Evo or FDD fits a particular environment, I think we get into trouble when we
want to apply the same level of precision to "agile."

Agile is a set of values. They fit anywhere that those values are respected,
including places where folks are trying to move the company culture away
from antithetical values and towards those of agile.

I don't know how to do either XP or "agile" with a "team" of 100 people.
But there's a difference. I can imagine that there might be some way to
follow agile values with a group of 100 people - some way I have not
yet learned. But I'm real sure you can't do XP with teams of that size.

So if we want to get beyond the values, I think we have to talk about
specific agile approaches, not about "agile" in general.

Charlie