If more user engagement is the key, the agile philosophy would be a sentence rather than a manifesto. Instead it was a bunch of vague maxims, that became a cul

If more user engagement is the key, the agile philosophy would be a sentence rather than a manifesto. Instead it was a bunch of vague maxims, that became a cult collection of heuristics (nominally rooted in Java, as much as it claimed to be polyglot). The counter-argument to this is "No True Agiles-man", so the brand never needs to take responsibility for the reality, and this defense is as much a part of the culture as anything. It's like agile is a religion, and the manifesto is the religious texts - selectively ignored or interpreted as needed. No, I don't feel this is much better than waterfall, especially as even that could have evolved into more user engagement, without the mantras ("waterfall is bad" itself being a mantra) - why can't waterfall be a "tool in the belt", or a reasoned stage in the process? Why can't agile principles be taken individually rather than adamant on the whole? Why can't sometimes people be more important that process, and sometimes process more important than people? Why can't we have a plan (moreso upfront), and still respond to change?