Engineering Manager Writes Book on Why Agile Fails in Large Organizations

A veteran engineering manager with nearly two decades of experience has written a book about why Agile transformations consistently fail inside large organizations. Drawing on his time at two major banks, he observed that companies typically adopt Agile rituals — sprints, retrospectives, user stories — without building the underlying conditions that make them effective. He argues that the real driver of high-performing teams is how work is framed: as problems to solve rather than tasks to execute. His current team faces a familiar threat, with leadership considering reassigning his engineers to struggling teams, a move he believes will destroy the very conditions that made them successful. The book is written not as a retrospective from someone who escaped the system, but as an active practitioner still navigating it from within.