The Software Development Lifecycle Is Dead

These engineers aren’t worse for skipping the ceremony. They’re unencumbered by it. Sprint planning, code review workflows, release trains, estimation rituals. None of it. They skipped the entire orthodoxy and went straight to building.

This description of ritual collapse is a welcome refinement to me. The ceremonies being skipped smell like the worst formalizations of agile that celebrate process adherence over serving the felt needs of humans on the other end.

Feels like a great time to revisit The Manifesto for Agile Software Development.

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

Agile, in it’s truest form, is back baby. We build in collaboration with agents to serve humans. We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.

The quality of what you build with agents is directly proportional to the quality of context you give them. Not the process. Not the ceremony. The context.

I believe this is true about all teammates, humans and agents alike. Process can provide a frame for context. Ceremony can act as scaffolding that props it up. Both can be helpful, but the most interesting people I’ve worked with never required the scaffolding or the frame to compact their point of view. They know how to explore widely to search the problem space, narrow in when it’s time to get things done, and only reach for scaffolding when it genuinely makes the work better. I think agentic workers reflect this quality, because we all enjoy the work better when working with highly talented people who challenge our thinking and ship relentlessly.