The term 'agile' has become diluted, with teams adopting surface-level practices like standups and scrummasters without understanding the underlying principle. The author proposes a cleaner heuristic: a team is truly agile when it can change how it works from within its existing system, without needing external approval or budget. The practices commonly associated with agile were originally valuable because teams had the freedom to experiment and adapt — that autonomy is the real core of agile, not the rituals themselves.
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