My response; > Nobody applies rigor to anything complicated anymore. No one ever did. There was no golden period before Agile, where rigor was applied but no

My response; > Nobody applies rigor to anything complicated anymore. No one ever did. There was no golden period before Agile, where rigor was applied but now we've gone all soft. Before Agile, tire fires were bigger and found much later. That's why they developed Agile. Process and tools can indeed help, but the point of what we are doing in development, is to build working software, not to just follow the process or use the tools. That may seem obvious, but it wasn't and it still isn't, you see many leaders, even in "Agile" environments, who are more comfortable being able to report the process is working, than to challenge a customer to build a better product. > What is actually valuable is a working solution to a user problem That is obviously what they are talking about. You are creating straw men. The root of this sentence comes somewhat from Gall's law, "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system" 3. You don't have a very extensive work history if you've never found engineers who care about customers. I would look at successful companies and successful startups. "Agile is simply a 180-degree reaction to decades of work in developing processes that result in reliable solutions." Its not, its the gradual evolution of software processes, its over 20 years old at this point, its predated by other Agile processes. It came from study of project failures. The more I re-read your rant, the more I realize either you are intentionally trying to create a stereotypical reaction to Agile or you are deeply disturbed. If you are a software engineer, you should just quit, why are you doing something that makes you so unhappy? This is so beyond reality its absurd. Agile is not some "giving everyone a trophy" bs.