Bit late to the party... but I don't think it even can be called cargo cult.
Cargo culting means imitating motions without understanding what they are supposed to achieve or why.
In case of Agile, even the motions are typically not being repeated. The basic tenets of Agile are moving responsibility for improving efficiency and quality to the teams and individual contributors with the goal of speeding up improvements. Why? Because in an infinite game whoever is improving faster is correlated with better chance to stay in the game for longer.
If you looked at the "motions" of truly Agile teams you would see that the management allows the team an ability to define how they work and achieve their performance and the team owns the process and is spending a significant portion of their effort towards improving it.
If "Agile" (to distinguish from actual Agile) is cargo culting, it is imitating other organisations which are imitating other organisations and so on, until both the motions and the reasons are completely lost in translation.
In "Agile", you will see some kind of advisor to the manager or the manager instituting "Agile" process by prescribing how teams are supposed to work with typically unspecified goal of making the organisations better (but no measurements to confirm the improvement). As a next level of perversion, they can even introduce Scaled Agile Framework which when implemented typically gives absolutely no room for teams to tailor their process to their needs and requires the team to get management approval for a smallest deviations. I have many times fought and lost battles to introduce small changes to Jira configuration.
I think managers are both uninformed about what Agile is but also even if they were informed, not mature enough to let go of their compulsion to determine how their organisation is supposed to run. I think this insecurity and immaturity is what is driving "Agile" deployments.
In my work with underperforming teams I try to undo as much of the "Agile" damage and distill it to the basics: agreement with the stakeholders about what Agile is and what it is, reducing ceremony to the only thing that really matters which is retrospective and working with the team to instil sense of ownership for whatever they are doing.
Cargo culting means imitating motions without understanding what they are supposed to achieve or why.
In case of Agile, even the motions are typically not being repeated. The basic tenets of Agile are moving responsibility for improving efficiency and quality to the teams and individual contributors with the goal of speeding up improvements. Why? Because in an infinite game whoever is improving faster is correlated with better chance to stay in the game for longer.
If you looked at the "motions" of truly Agile teams you would see that the management allows the team an ability to define how they work and achieve their performance and the team owns the process and is spending a significant portion of their effort towards improving it.
If "Agile" (to distinguish from actual Agile) is cargo culting, it is imitating other organisations which are imitating other organisations and so on, until both the motions and the reasons are completely lost in translation.
In "Agile", you will see some kind of advisor to the manager or the manager instituting "Agile" process by prescribing how teams are supposed to work with typically unspecified goal of making the organisations better (but no measurements to confirm the improvement). As a next level of perversion, they can even introduce Scaled Agile Framework which when implemented typically gives absolutely no room for teams to tailor their process to their needs and requires the team to get management approval for a smallest deviations. I have many times fought and lost battles to introduce small changes to Jira configuration.
I think managers are both uninformed about what Agile is but also even if they were informed, not mature enough to let go of their compulsion to determine how their organisation is supposed to run. I think this insecurity and immaturity is what is driving "Agile" deployments.
In my work with underperforming teams I try to undo as much of the "Agile" damage and distill it to the basics: agreement with the stakeholders about what Agile is and what it is, reducing ceremony to the only thing that really matters which is retrospective and working with the team to instil sense of ownership for whatever they are doing.