GOOD STRATEGY REBELLION

Tag: scrum

  • Winning Wars With Agile: Fear and Loathing – Revisited

    Winning Wars With Agile: Fear and Loathing – Revisited

    Martyn Rhisiart Jones

    “Logistics is all of war-making, except shooting the guns, releasing the bombs, and firing the torpedoes.”

    ADM Lynde D. McCormick, USN

    Martyn Rhisiart Jones, Córdoba, 3rd October 2024

    Martyn Rhisiart Jones, Marid, Friday 13th March 2026

    In the boardrooms of Silicon Valley and the corridors of Whitehall, the gospel of agility has become a mantra for efficiency and innovation. Borrowed from the frenetic world of software development, where iterative sprints and self-organising teams promise to outpace lumbering bureaucracies, agile methodologies, scaled up through frameworks like SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework), are now touted as universal elixirs. But can these principles, honed in the digital realm, truly orchestrate the chaos of armed conflict? Or do they risk injecting perilous uncertainty into arenas where hesitation can spell catastrophe? This question, once a provocative thought experiment, gains urgency amid evolving threats, from hybrid warfare in Eastern Europe to cyber skirmishes in the South China Sea. Drawing on historical precedents, contemporary military adaptations, and a dash of Celtic scepticism, we dissect whether agility’s allure holds water on the front lines, echoing the resilient pragmatism of Welsh soldiery through the ages.

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  • STRAIGHT TALK: Agile at Scale is Bullshit by Design – The Guardian

    STRAIGHT TALK: Agile at Scale is Bullshit by Design – The Guardian

    Martyn Rhisiart Jones

    Madrid, Wednesday 25th February 2026.

    Seven years on, the verdict is in, and it’s not flattering. Back in 2019, in a Brussels-fuelled rant channelling the incomparable Bob Hoffman, I declared Agile at Scale the next frontier of IT bullshit: immature, ill-conceived, supercilious, and emphatically not agile. It killed communication with jargon, turned criticism into heresy, and mangled history by ignoring what actually worked. I called it a cultish Frankenstein of Scientology zeal, Vatican pomp, and authoritarian quirks – all wrapped in vainglorious slide decks.

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  • CEO BRIEFING: Agile at Scale is Bullshit by Design – Remastered and Revisited – 2026/01/27

    CEO BRIEFING: Agile at Scale is Bullshit by Design – Remastered and Revisited – 2026/01/27

    Martyn Rhisiart Jones

    Bruxelles, 28th May 2019

    To begin at the beginning

    To paraphrase the great Bob Hoffman. Just when you feared that Agile evangelists might produce even more nonsense, they surprise you. What do they do? Exceed expectations.

    And how did they do that? Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Agile at Scale. It comes with all the miscellaneous, spiced-up, and vainglorious crap-on-the-side that accompanies it.

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  • Can Agile Methods Win a War?

    Can Agile Methods Win a War?

    Martyn Richard Jones

    “Logistics is all of war-making, except shooting the guns, releasing the bombs, and firing the torpedoes.”

    ADM Lynde D. McCormick, USN

    Martyn Richard Jones, Córdoba, 3rd October 2024

    Narrator: Here is a billion-dollar question: Can Agile-to-Scale be effectively used to fight a war, a regional conflict, or a global existential threat?

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