Challenging Misconceptions About Behaviour in Agile Teams

I keep hearing people justify bad behaviour in Agile teams by saying, “That’s how Agile works.” No. It isn’t.

Agility isn’t an excuse for chaos, poor planning, or avoiding accountability. True agility requires more discipline, not less. More planning, more diligence, more professionalism.

If your team can’t produce a usable increment every Sprint, if work is started without enough understanding to be confident it can be completed in the timebox, or if developers don’t know how their work contributes to the product vision—then you’re not Agile. You’re just unstructured.

Scrum isn’t a free-for-all. It’s a social technology for delivering adaptive solutions with professionalism and integrity. Agility only works when teams commit to doing things right.

Let’s stop normalising unprofessional behaviour and call it out when we see it. Agility deserves better.

Have you seen Agile misunderstood this way? What’s the worst case you’ve encountered?