The Outcome Is Not Agile

For years I’ve said: “Don’t do Agile, be Agile.” But I think I’ve moved on.

Not because it’s wrong, there’s truth in it, but because it still centres the method, not the mission.

Agile is not the outcome. Agile is a means to an end.

Same with Lean, Scrum, OKRs, Kanban, and whatever new framework someone’s trying to get you to buy into this month.

The real outcome? That’s customer impact. Making a tangible difference. Creating something useful. Learning whether that thing was useful. And if it wasn’t, changing direction before we waste more time.

I now lean into something simpler:

“What can we get into someone’s hands, as quickly as possible, so they can tell us if it’s worth a damn?”

That might be an experiment, a prototype, a hacked-together internal tool, or a first feature set that solves one tiny part of a much bigger problem.

It’s not about a JIRA board, a definition of done, or a perfectly groomed backlog. It’s about intent, a deliberate push to find value.

And let’s be honest, value doesn’t always mean revenue. It might mean saving people time, helping someone make a better decision, or exposing a blind spot in your thinking. Sometimes the value is the learning itself.

So yes, I still use Agile. I still believe in flow, feedback, and focus. But I don’t worship the mechanics. I care more about momentum. Because moving with purpose is more powerful than sticking to the playbook.

A real example.

I once worked with a team who, on the surface, looked like the poster children for Scrum. Stand-ups every day. Grooming sessions. Sprint reviews. Burn-down charts. The works.

They were even being held up by the wider business as “the team that’s doing it right.”

But the truth was, they weren’t actually delivering much of anything.

They were so focused on doing the method, they’d lost sight of the outcome. Estimates, refinements, planning sessions... but nothing got over the line. Stand-ups were about what they did, not what they delivered. And because they were seen as a model team, they spent even more time showing others how they “did Agile.”

So we stripped it all back. Focused on the flow of work. Deliberate intent. No more ceremonies for ceremony’s sake. No more pretending we could predict the unpredictable. No more cramming work into sprints just to look busy.

We focused on doing less, but finishing. Stopped estimating. Stopped pretending sprint boundaries were sacred. Instead, we asked: “What’s the most valuable thing we can do right now?”

We made sure to balance new work with BAU, using a simple selection policy to keep it healthy (I wrote about that in a previous post). And within two months? The team was flying. Delivering more. Happier. Clearer. In control.

Agile doesn’t deliver anything. Teams do. And the best ones stay focused on what matters, finishing the right things, not following the right rituals.

Curious to hear from others:

Where have you seen process get in the way of progress? And what did it take to shift the focus back to value?