Agile Manifesto: The Reformation That Became the Church

"In 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to a church door to protest the sale of salvation. The Catholic Church had turned faith into a transaction: Pay for indulgences, reduce your time in purgatory. Luther's message was plain: You could be saved through faith alone, you didn't need the church to interpret scripture for you, and every believer could approach God directly."

"The Communist Manifesto of 1848 promised liberation of the working class and the end of class hierarchy. By the 1930s, the revolution it inspired had produced the Politburo, show trials, and an ideological orthodoxy enforced at gunpoint. Democracy promised rule by the people, not hereditary aristocrats. By the 21st century, it had produced political dynasties, party bureaucracies that control who gets to run, and career politicians who had never held a "real" job outside government. The new aristocracy just runs for election."

The Agile Manifesto followed Luther's Reformation arc: radical simplicity hardened into scaling frameworks, transformation programs, and debates about what counts as "real Agile." Disruptive movements tend to ossify into institutional forms that replicate the hierarchies and gatekeeping they opposed. Historical examples include the Scientific Revolution morphing into peer-review gatekeeping, the Communist Revolution producing the Politburo and show trials, and democracy evolving political dynasties and party bureaucracies. The pattern shows rebellion leading to new orthodoxies that police membership and practice. Practitioners must learn to recognize when an approach has become orthodox and find ways to practice core principles without adopting the apparatus.

Read at dzone.com