Dilbert: "We need three new programmers." Boss: "Use agile programming methods."
I really do hear it a lot: “We tried agile but it didn’t work.” Even the way one says this is passive. Something was out there, we tried it, it failed. Let’s rephrase that:
“We picked some specific Agile practices and didn’t get the results we wanted or expected.”
“We brought in an Agile consultant, but it just cost a lot of money and nothing really improved.”
“The guy who’s always talking about pair programming, we let him do it, but nobody else is interested.”
The difference is not just the informality, it’s the mental and emotional ability to connect with what needs to get done as opposed to what you’ve been told to do. That’s part of the principle of self-organizing teams.
But you have to ask yourself, is your corporate culture one that rewards following orders? Or rewards the solving of difficult problems?