The Dark Side of Agile Development: Why Focusing Too Much on Process Can Harm Business Outcomes

The Dark Side of Agile Development: Why Focusing Too Much on Process Can Harm Business Outcomes

This is what goes through your head

I took over a team once. My first task was to sit in the management meeting. The head of tech walked to the front. Clicker in hand. His name glowing at the bottom of the title slide. He began with words from the Agile manifesto. A sermon dressed as strategy.

I remember the feeling in my chest. Heavy. Familiar.

Because I had lived this play before. Different room. Different actors. The lines never changed.

Charts. Backlogs. Deadlines missed but explained away. The performance of progress.

Engineers circling numbers. Managers nodding. Customers still waiting. Revenue still flat. And the room convincing itself that neat boards and smooth charts meant something.

I used to believe it too. Agile would save us from process. Agile would deliver outcomes. That was the promise. Transparency. Stand-ups. Retros. Sprints. Developers reciting yesterday, today, tomorrow. Motion treated as proof. Motion treated as progress.

But Agile isn’t the problem. The worship of process is. The blind belief that every issue must be groomed into a sprint. The paralysis when a team cannot move unless a ceremony tells them to. The mechanics become the air they breathe. Without them, they suffocate.

I learned this the hard way. A threading bug was bleeding revenue. Passengers furious. The airline demanding answers. The process said wait. File the ticket. Groom the story. Schedule the sprint. But time was death. So we broke it. Three of us, focused, three in the morning, chasing the fault until the code gave in. We solved it. We saved them hundreds of thousands. Flights left on time. Customers smiled again.

And still it was not enough. Because we skipped the ritual. Because we ignored the chart. Management thanked us, then closed the door. Success without permission was still failure. That was when I understood. Agile, when worshipped as religion, blinds you.

That lesson never left me. Three people working with urgency will always beat twenty-five waiting for a product manager to sprinkle fairy dust on their keyboards. You know this already. You have seen the large team waste a day blaming tickets instead of delivering outcomes. You have watched people argue over estimates and points while the customer sits empty-handed.

And still you let it happen. Because it feels safe. Because everyone else is doing it. Because the room tells itself that this is how real companies build.

Ask yourself this. Does your process yield a business result you can touch?

Can any engineer explain how their tickets help you win? Win business. Keep customers. Reduce churn. Acquire new ones. Do the stories roll up to an epic? An epic that makes a business impact you can measure? Do the stories read well to a layperson, or do they collapse into jargon the moment you step outside engineering?

Here is another question. What is a sprint point worth? Is it an hour? Two? How much does that hour cost your business? What are you really measuring when you measure velocity?

The original intent of Agile was transparency. To strip away the veil. To let leaders see what was real so they could make forward-looking decisions. Not so engineers could blind you with jargon. Not so process could harden into scripture. Not so ceremonies could replace judgment.

But that is where you are. The tickets slide across the board. The charts line up. The ceremonies are observed. And yet nothing moves. Customers still waiting. Competitors shipping. You nod and you smile and you tell yourself it is working. But you hear it. The hollow sound. The fake hustle.

Because process should never be the product. But you made it the product.

Your engineers were meant to solve problems. To think in products, not points. To build outcomes, not tickets. But look at them now. Sprint after sprint, the only measure is whether a story moved to done. Not whether the business moved forward.

I saw this again when I was in that boardroom, watching the head of tech click through his slides. It felt like all the theater I had already lived. Bar charts of bugs reduced, as if all bugs were equal. Then the money slide. The burndown chart. Staccato lines, each one missing its deadline. But, he said, we learned. Team chemistry increased.

And just when it could not get worse, it did. He showed the backlog. A mountain of tickets no one would ever climb. Then he clicked again.

The slide had one word.

Questions?

The room was silent. No one asked about outcomes. No one asked about customers. They nodded instead, relieved by the neatness of it all. That is what worship looks like.

Think about it. The charts tell a story, but not the one you need. The backlog grows, and no one can say why. Burndown charts show deadlines missed, then missed again, but dressed in language that sounds like progress. And everyone convinces themselves it is true.

But no retrospective will explain churn. No sprint review will defend missed revenue. No burndown chart will hide the truth that customers left while you were measuring velocity.

Your competitors know this. They do not sit in retros. They sit with customers. They do not polish the backlog. They deliver. While you debate story points, they claim market share. While you review process, they build products. While you perform Agile, they practice business.

And what happens when the boardroom slide comes? Costs climbing. Growth flat. What happens when they ask why revenue missed? What happens when your only answer is process?

You can tell them the rituals were followed. You can show them the neat board. But that answer will not save you.

The blueprint is simple. Process must serve outcomes. Always.

Talk about customer value. Not velocity. Revenue impact. Not points. Expect your team to protect your business. Not their ceremonies.

You may need to change the process. You may need to burn it down. That is your choice. But missing business goals because your team worships rituals is not acceptable.

Agile is fine. Frameworks are fine. Worship is not.

It is okay to use Agile. It is not okay to be trapped by it.