I know "agile" (we were on the XP flavor) was working for the teams I worked on in the early 2000s, so I'm sure not _all_ agile is cargo-culting... but it seems that the things that made agile work did not survive broader adoption. Which seems like a contradiction, but really isn't: The agile I knew attracted a certain kind of people, and when those people worked together, it worked. But when agile became the thing everybody does, the dynamic of attracting the (perhaps few?) people that actually made agile work was lost.

"Agile" works, but "Agile" is not a set of rules to follow. "Agile" is a chain of conscious decisions made by a team.

"We have sprints" is not "Agile". Neither "we use Jira", nor "we have retros".

Term "Agile" has been stolen from us, butchered and it's dead body had been turned to scarecrow. And now all those "agile couches", "agile offices", "certified scrum masters" are dancing around it's corpse.

But there are some of us, who worked in truly agile team, we witnessed it in it's glory. We remember when it was alive.

If you worship Cargo Cult, you aren't doing "Agile" despite the name. Period.

And what does work?

Agile certainly works, I see how people around me are finishing projects and customers are happy.