This article is based on expert commentary originally published on Forbes (July 2019). Attribution is preserved throughout.
Why Agile Still Matters
Agile has earned its place in the business lexicon. For almost two decades it has helped companies of all sizes break free from the inflexibility of traditional top-down hierarchies and rigid long-term planning. You will hear talk of “squads”, “chapters” and “tribes”, and although different flavours of Agile exist, certain patterns recur: teams work in short sprints, they are empowered to make decisions, and success is measured by responsiveness to customer demands rather than adherence to a fixed plan.
Justin Rodenbostel, Vice President at digital transformation agency SPR, argues there is no “after Agile”. He sees adjacent movements such as DevOps, Continuous Delivery, and Lean as direct extensions of Agile thinking, and believes organisations will continue drawing on the original Agile Manifesto to evolve how they work and respond to customers.
But Agile is also demanding. It requires intense, sustained commitment and depends heavily on organisational culture to succeed. According to the annual State of Agile survey, the top three challenges are general resistance to change, inadequate management support, and a culture at odds with Agile values. Below, practitioners share the most common pitfalls — and how to navigate them.
Pitfall 1: Short Sprints Can Obscure Long-Term Vision
One of Agile’s biggest draws is that annual planning is replaced by shorter-term milestones. Teams focus on delivering value now rather than executing a fixed multi-year roadmap. That responsiveness is powerful, but it carries a risk: teams can lose sight of where the organisation is ultimately heading.
Ian McClarty, CEO of global IT service provider PhoenixNAP, puts it plainly: “When teams are so heavily focused on the current sprint, communication about long-term vision may be put aside or ignored, leaving the team with a feeling that there is no grand plan they are supporting.”
The most straightforward remedy is deliberate, regular communication of larger business objectives — whether that is doubling headcount within two years or reaching a specific revenue milestone. McClarty also notes that Agile itself can reshape those goals by helping organisations fail faster and learn from mistakes sooner. He explains: “The ability to carve a project into many smaller pieces helps us create a sense of continued progress and motivation within teams, and also helps us create cleaner stop points — dropping features out of iterations to allow for faster time to market to see if the product will be successful before investing too much.”
Practical steps
- Share business-level OKRs or strategic goals at each sprint planning session so teams understand context.
- Run quarterly “big picture” reviews that sit above the sprint cycle and revisit organisational direction.
- Use product roadmaps — even lightweight ones — to communicate intent without locking in rigid plans.
Pitfall 2: The Agile Mindset Requires Constant Reinforcement
Christopher McFarlane, Agile Project Manager for Walmart Canada, identifies two distinct hurdles in building an Agile mindset: convincing internal team members of its value, and educating external customers and suppliers on how to engage with Agile teams.
“Encouraging team members and partners to understand the benefits of this new way of working — fast failure, constant communication, transparency — is the first hurdle,” McFarlane explains. “The second is a technical understanding of the components of an Agile methodology and educating stakeholders on how to engage with the Agile team, which is different from other areas of the business.”
Dr Matt Poepsel, Senior Vice President of Product at Predictive Index, found that a successful mindset shift required coaching individuals in the soft skills Agile demands: flexibility, collaboration, discipline, and a focus on results. He notes that any business transformation demands a simultaneous talent transformation: “We coached each individual by examining where their natural behaviours and approach were well-suited to some of these activities and where they needed to stretch to succeed.”
Chris Steel, Head of Transformation for North America at PA Consulting, emphasises the importance of early wins. “Where we have seen organisations struggle is where they approach it in a half-hearted way without the right sponsorship. The change to culture and ways of working required to achieve the best results is too significant without full engagement.”
Practical steps
- Identify and publicise early successes to build internal credibility for Agile practices.
- Invest in soft-skills coaching alongside technical Agile training.
- Secure visible sponsorship from senior leadership — Agile transformations stall without it.
- Create onboarding materials specifically for external stakeholders explaining how to collaborate with Agile teams.
Pitfall 3: Teams Slide Back into Traditional Management Styles
Adopting Agile is not a one-time event. Without sustained attention, teams can revert to the top-down, hierarchical structures they were accustomed to — particularly under delivery pressure.
David Fort, Managing Director at Haines Watts Manchester, describes it this way: “Being an Agile business isn’t a start-stop scenario; it’s a constant shift in culture and balance that has to be regularly revisited. If you stop running as an Agile business, you’re likely to seize up. The real challenge is ensuring the agility is fresh and team members remain focused on being Agile.”
Fort also advises factoring Agile compatibility into hiring decisions — prioritising candidates who demonstrate adaptability and comfort with ambiguity alongside technical skills and academic credentials.
Practical steps
- Schedule regular retrospectives that explicitly examine whether Agile principles are still being followed — not just whether delivery targets are being met.
- Include Agile values and behaviours in performance reviews and hiring criteria.
- Rotate Agile coaching and facilitation responsibilities to avoid over-dependence on a single champion.
Pitfall 4: Agile Does Not Scale Automatically
Rodenbostel identifies what he considers the most common mistake: assuming that success achieved by a small Agile team can be replicated at scale simply by applying the same practices to larger groups. “What works for small groups often doesn’t work for larger or different groups,” he warns. “Customers, business stakeholders, software assets, and government or industry regulation can all have an impact on what works and what does not. We see a tendency when scaling to standardise in a way that is often too prescribed.”
He also notes that the Agile move away from big upfront annual planning is particularly challenging in publicly traded companies, where investor expectations can push leadership back toward rigid, predictable roadmaps. The goal, he says, is to determine the appropriate balance rather than insisting on Agile purity in every context.
Practical steps
- Treat scaling frameworks (SAFe, LeSS, Nexus, etc.) as starting points, not prescriptions — adapt them to your specific constraints.
- Run a deliberate pilot with a small team before scaling Agile practices organisation-wide, and document what worked and what did not.
- Acknowledge regulatory and investor-relations constraints explicitly and design your Agile practice around them rather than ignoring them.
- Avoid standardising processes across teams prematurely — let teams develop practices that suit their context before rolling out a uniform model.
The Bottom Line
Agile is not a silver bullet, but it is a durable and well-evidenced approach to building adaptive, customer-focused teams. Its failures are rarely about methodology — they are almost always about culture, commitment, and communication. The organisations that get the most out of Agile are those that treat it as an ongoing practice rather than a project to be completed, invest in the human side of the transformation, and are honest about the contexts where a more structured approach remains necessary.
As Rodenbostel puts it, the concepts in the original Agile Manifesto are not going away. The challenge is applying them with the discipline and self-awareness they demand.