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2021-12-18

Agile is a Dirty Word

Agile is a Dirty Word

November 2018

Any country with “Democratic” in its official name ISN’T democratic. Any organization that tells you that it is “doing Agile” ISN’T doing Agile. I noticed the first as I was growing up during the Cold War. Then I discovered working as a consultant for ThoughtWorks in the last few years.

  • How do you teach Agile to people who think they are already doing Agile?
  • How do you explain to a business that believes that “Agile doesn’t work” that the reason why it isn’t working is that IT has to change, as well as the technology group?
  • How do you even begin to do this when everybody you meet thinks that they’ve “tried this all before; it just doesn’t work here!”

We’ve worked under these conditions and successfully effected real ground-level change. In this talk, I’ll share some techniques that we’ve successfully used.

Agile is a Dirty Word by James Birnie

James Birnie From ThoughtWorks


I started working in software delivery in the late 1990s when TDD was something you studied but never did, and a pipeline was something for carrying oil. In 2005 I joined a startup and felt I could make a difference. After nearly ten years, I moved on to a career in consultancy with ThoughtWorks. After three years, I still feel like every day is different. I’m constantly meeting great people, learning new things, finding new challenges, and helping to solve other problems.