Reports from The Resistance: Scrum and Circumstance

Reports from The Resistance Journal Entry #325

“And here, in its artificially lit habitat, we observe the elusive Agile Imposter… adopting Agile rituals for reasons no one quite understands.”

Welcome to the majestic world of Agilefall—that special kind of project that walks like Agile, talks like Agile, but delivers like Waterfall.

The daily standups are punctual. The retrospectives are full of stickies and emotional check-ins. The Jira board? Oh, it’s beautiful. Stories everywhere. Some even have acceptance criteria. But behind this carefully constructed facade, a different truth lurks in the Gantt charts and backchannel spreadsheets: this thing’s been Waterfall all along.

Let’s break it down.

Signs You’re in an Agilefall Project

• Your ‘MVP’ takes 18 months to release
  Minimum Viable Product? Try Maximally Vetted PowerPoint. It’s got stakeholder buy-in from three layers of leadership and no actual users.
• You sprint in name only
  Two-week sprints, sure. But everything gets reprioritized mid-sprint, backlog grooming is performative, and "definition of done" is “whenever the program manager says so.”
• Standups are 30 minutes long and mostly status reports
  Every update starts with "Yesterday I..." and ends with a minor existential crisis.
• Retrospectives are a team therapy session
  Valuable insights like “we need more time” are carefully documented and summarily ignored.
• JIRA is a landfill
  Tickets multiply but never resolve. No one knows what’s in the "In Progress" column. The backlog is older than some interns.

Process Theater at Its Finest

Agilefall isn’t a methodology. It’s a vibe. It’s what happens when organizations want the Agile brand without the Agile behaviors.

They want speed—but not empowerment. Flexibility—but not uncertainty. Iteration—but only if the outcome can be locked in by Q1. So they retrofit Waterfall thinking into Agile ceremonies and hope no one notices.

Spoiler: everyone notices.

What To Do Instead

You don’t need to be a Scrum zealot to do better. Here’s how to course-correct without burning it all down:

• Name the dysfunction without assigning blame.
  “It feels like we’re doing Agile rituals, but not seeing Agile results. Can we dig into that?”
• Refocus on outcomes, not rituals.
  If the standup isn’t helping, change it. If retros get ignored, redesign them. Form should follow function, not the other way around.
• Find your one sacred Agile principle.
  Is it short feedback loops? Empowered teams? Working software over documentation? Pick one, and make it your north star.
• Be kind, but firm.
  Agilefall isn’t usually malicious—it’s just institutional muscle memory. You’re not trying to shame people. You’re trying to wake them up.

Final Thought

Agilefall is funny until it’s not—until people burn out from faux agility and deadlines slip while the Jira board gaslights the team into thinking progress is happening.

Real agility isn’t about sticky notes or sprint ceremonies. It’s about responding to change with purpose and clarity.

If your project thinks it is Agile, maybe it’s time for a little identity exploration.

ChangeGuild: Power to the Practitioner™

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