Epilogue: Agile Is Dead—Long Live Agile

Abstract

While one company after the other is devoting itself to agility, INSEAD professors Phanish Puranam and Julien Clément ask whether Scrum really makes sense outside of software and typical development activities (“search situations”). Under the title, “Why agile may be fragile,” they wonder whether Scrum, when used in situations other than the framework’s core application areas, will not just be a temporary phenomenon. They question whether agile techniques will be able to produce the equality, participation, and autonomy that employees strive for across corporate areas. In their view, there is no “broadly applicable mechanism besides hierarchy for scaling collaboration among a diverse set of interdependent individuals.”