Agile Stumbling?

James Shore has an interesting post, The Decline and Fall of Agile, that has generated a lot of good discussion over the last couple of weeks.

I've seen a shift in my business over the last few years.

I can't disagree with the assessment of James' own business trends (or his colleagues) . But I have to wonder how well his anecdotal sample extrapolates to the rest of the Agile industry?  Without some real numbers to back it up, how can he claim that Agile is either declining or will fail?

But those hundreds of successes will be drowned out by the thousands of failures.

That statement isn’t evidence of a trend; it’s a prediction of the future based to how he happens to be feeling right now. It would be nice if James (or anyone else) could provide some real evidence that the Agile movement is actually in decline -- or at least it's success rate relative to the alternatives, e.g. Waterfall.

Some more views on this are here:
James Shore: The Decline and Fall of Agile
Thoughts on the Decline and Fall of Agile
The Decline and Fall of Agile and How Scrum Makes it Hurt More

These are valuable discussions for developers and managers that don't have direct personal experience with Agile methodologies but might be considering using them in the future.  It's clear (to me anyway) that when it comes to software development management, the process is a difficult one no matter what path you take.