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Comment by finnthehuman | Hacker News Reader

The agile manifesto is a nonfalsafiable commentary on what was the status quo decades ago. The only possible response to complaints about anything done under the guise of agile is that the practitioner did it wrong.

In a status quo where everyone is trying (or at least claiming) it as a guiding principle, any actionable advice is only the interpretation various people bring to their reading of the scriptures.

In these cases, the utility of the manifesto is nil.

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It is a commentary as valid today, as it was when I started and wrote a few articles on the c2 wiki.

If you all agree on the manifesto.. at least you can ask questions, and then see how it all fits together.

IMHO: If the question "why" is outlawed, I'll find another place to work.

We don't have to agree on the manifesto to ask questions - in fact, we might well get better questions if there is a certain amount of skepticism.

One solution is to avoid using the word "scrum". Since nobody can really agree on exactly what it means the word is worse than meaningless. The word serves only as a conversation trap; many good conversations devolve into defining what "scrum" means--somehow we went from a meaningful conversation to endlessly arguing over the definition of a single word.

The polite way to say this is something like "people have many ideas about what scrum is, can you explain what you mean without using the word scrum, it would help my understanding".

> The agile manifesto is a nonfalsafiable [sic] commentary on what was the status quo decades ago.

It's not a commentary. So.. you kinda failed already on that point. It's also not pretending to be a scientific hypothesis in the first place so "unfalsifiable" is a weird attack as it's just missing the point.. again.

It's a commentary in that it was written in response to the practices of the day.

It's nonfalsifiable because it can't be incorrect. No matter what you do, you can claim it didn't match what the authors intended

In the same way as the Golden Rule is non-falsifiable? I guess... but that in no way takes away from the truth of the Golden Rule.

It's very easy to go against the golden rule. I don't want people to scream obscenities at me so I don't. If I scream obscenities at people and am upset when people respond in kind, it's clear I violated the golden rule

That made no sense.

I am seeing a parallel to modern day socialists/communists. Despite hundreds of instances of real adherents to the philosophy really trying in earnest to achieve communism in a wide variety of cultures, geographies and situations, it never works. We know why it works and economists can tell you exactly why it doesn't work. Yet, every new case of communism's failure is chalked up to not being "real communism" or being "bastardized by dictators".

> economists can tell you exactly why it doesn't work

Can they now? It seems to me that the more "exact" an economist gets, the more they should be ignored. Economics is a fiendishly difficult discipline and anyone who claims exactitude should be setting off your B.S. meter.

There are parallels to Christianity or Islam too: if you don't 100% own the brand, it will be coopted by people who will redefine it and confuse everyone. Only the Catholic Church really controls its own brand and can actually define what it even is.

Same as with REST for that matter.

The big difference to communism is that the Agile Manifesto was written from personal experience of having working teams. The Communist Manifesto was wild speculation about how society could maybe work.

I have worked following the Agile Manifesto for soon 13 years and it works very well. No surprise really, as it's just treating everyone like adults.

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