Recently, there were a lot of views expressed around the so called downfall of Nokia and whether Scrum was helping the organization at all. Similar concerns and thoughts were raised when Toyota had recalled cars dues to quality issues. Is Agile 'the core' factor in product development ?
Responding to a discussion “Nokia Demise: Is Agile to Blame?” on linkedin Scrum Practitioners group (membership required), David Updike responded that Agile is just one of the components for successful product development
Agile is but one factor in Product Development. In our contemporary society a successful product needs equal success in other areas such as Marketing, Sales and Advertising. Look at all the the buzz about iPhones/iOS, Android and even Blackberry and Microsoft Mobile technologies. They are all pushing the advertising bandwagon very hard. But where is the counter-punch from Nokia for Symbian? Yep, there was/is none.
Likewise, Mick Maguire and Bob Vandenberg agreed that Agile, in itself, would not ensure a good product or a successful strategy. It is just a part in the picture of the organization, which as a social organism has many parts.
Vernon Stinebaker, echoed the points made by Brad Murphy that Agile cannot be sold as a silver bullet. According to Vernon,
Agile is something we are (or are not), it’s not something we do (i.e. it is not a methodology, or a framework).
Methodologies and frameworks can support an effective agile organization, but ‘doing’ a methodology or dogmatically following a framework or process steps certainly doesn't make an organization or an individual agile … Lazy agile — ‘doing’ agile instead of being agile — will continue to fail. And it will continue to result in questioning whether agile fails: whether agile is viable and valuable.
Responding to Brad, Craig Larman mentioned,
also, naturally, product success is a result of more complex forces and factors than just enabling agility, transparency, inspecting, and adapting with scrum -- having a good product vision and not being wedded to the past are useful.
Siddhartha Govindaraj suggested that considering Agile to be the primary driver of the business is entirely misguided. Companies following Agile need to integrate well with business strategy, marketing and sales to be successful.
In most organizations, business strategy and marketing & sales departments have a much bigger impact on success than the quality of software. Agile has had a minimal impact on the bottomline, even in companies where agile is practiced well.
Agile is a way to build better software, but to think that its a primary driver for business success is misguided IMHO.
Thus, there seems to be strong general consensus that Agile is only a part of the puzzle. The key lies in understanding that practicing Agile the right way would uncover problems which would need to be fixed at various levels in the organization. As Ken Schwaber quoted , Scrum is no silver bullet, and that it does not bring out excellence, but exposes incompetence.