Agile Does Not Mean Fast (And Other Disappointing Truths)

At some point, Agile became synonymous with speed. Fast delivery, fast iterations, fast feedback — fast panic. Which is unfortunate, because it’s wrong. Agile does not mean fast.

The longer I work in this industry, the more convinced I am that this single misunderstanding is responsible for a significant share of the frustration, burnout, and the urge to throw laptops out of windows that surrounds Agile today.

Where the Confusion Comes From

Part of the problem is linguistic. Agile translates to nimble, flexible, or adaptable. It does not translate to “faster at all costs.” Yet somewhere along the way, many organizations — especially management and clients — decided the dictionary was optional and quietly swapped the definitions.

Over the last fifteen years, I’ve seen attempts to introduce Agile in well over a dozen organizations. It worked properly in exactly one.

In the remaining cases, Agile became a convenient label. A shiny wrapper for a very old idea: we want you to type faster, but now we’ll call it a “Sprint”.

Agile Is About Direction Changes, Not Top Speed

At its core, Agile is about the ability to change direction without crashing. That ability comes at a cost, which is where expectations often start to violently diverge from reality.

If you want a useful analogy, look at skiing. A slalom skier constantly changes direction: quick turns, tight gates, continuous adjustment. The skill lies in responsiveness. A downhill skier, on the other hand, optimizes for raw speed — fewer turns, straight lines, praying for survival.

The important part is this: the slalom skier will never be as fast as the downhill skier. Expecting them to be is not a “stretch goal”; it’s physics. You cannot optimize for maximum maneuverability and maximum velocity simultaneously.

The Trade-Off Everyone Forgets

Agile allows teams to react to change. But reacting to change means revisiting decisions, re-planning work, discarding half-written code, and absorbing massive cognitive overhead. All of that costs time.

Expecting Agile teams to reach the finish line faster than teams following a rigid, pre-defined plan is like expecting a taxi driver in downtown traffic to beat a train. Sure, the taxi can change routes if the road is blocked. The train cannot. But the train is still going to win the race to the airport. Unless, of course, you realize too late that you’re on a high-speed connection to the wrong destination. Then you’re just getting to the wrong place faster.

When Agile Becomes “Zombie Waterfall”

There’s a second, even more frustrating pattern. Teams are told: “We’re Agile, so we can change requirements at any time.”

In theory, that’s true. In practice, what often happens is that scope changes constantly, while deadlines and budgets remain carved in stone.

Pressure increases exactly as it did in classic Waterfall, but now you have more meetings. Teams lose the stability of a fixed plan and the protection of realistic expectations.

That’s not Agile. That’s just chaos with a JIRA board.

When Agile Does Finish Earlier (and Why)

All of this does not mean that Agile teams never reach their goals faster. They sometimes do. But when it happens, it’s usually not because the team typed faster. It’s because the team discovered — along the way — that the original “critical need” wasn’t actually that critical.

I once saw a project estimated at ten months of work. The goal was to build the “Dashboard to End All Dashboards.” Interactive charts, real-time filters, the works. Instead of immediately installing three distinct JavaScript frameworks to reimplement a spreadsheet in the browser, the team started small. The first step was embarrassingly simple: fetch the data and export it as a CSV.

Was that aligned with the grand vision? No. But when the business received the CSV files, they imported them into Excel, built their pivot tables in five minutes, and realized they didn’t need a custom app at all.

The project finished in four weeks instead of ten months. Not because the team was fast. But because they were Agile enough to realize the most efficient code is the code you don’t have to write.

Why Developers Don’t “Hate Agile”

This is why the statement “developers hate Agile” misses the point. Most developers don’t hate Agile. They hate Cosplay Agile.

They hate being told that flexibility magically eliminates trade-offs. They hate being expected to absorb unlimited change without adjustments to scope, budget, or timelines. They hate the assumption that if they just stand up during meetings, the code will write itself faster.

Agile doesn’t remove constraints. It just moves them around so you can see them better.

The Uncomfortable Conclusion

Agile is a powerful approach, but only if everyone involved understands the deal:

1. You gain flexibility.
2. You lose raw speed.
3. You must renegotiate expectations continuously.

If management or clients expect faster delivery, unlimited change, and fixed deadlines — then Agile isn’t being misunderstood. It’s being abused. And no amount of “Scrum Master” certifications can save you from that.

Agile does not mean fast. It means adaptable. And pretending otherwise is how teams end up exhausted, disillusioned, and quietly reverting back to Waterfall — just with standups, story points, and nicer vocabulary for “crunch time”.

You can find more agile misconceptions in Part II: Agile Rituals and Other Cargo Cults.