A Lament for Agile Software Development

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Agile development, we loved thee so,
Yet now thy flame is flickering low,
And all the world grows dimmer in our sight.

Once thou wert young and full of fire,
A new way of working, a bright new dawn,
We dreamed of all the things thou couldst spawn,
And all the ways thou couldst lift us higher.

But now we mourn thy fading grace,
Thy light that once shone bright and bold,
Now flickers weakly, frail and old,
And leaves us lost in this darkened space.

No more the sprints that flew so fast,
No more the stand-ups sharp and bright,
No more the retrospectives to shed light,
On how to improve, how to make it last.

Agile development, we bid thee adieu,
Thou wert a bright star in our sky,
And though now we say our fey goodbye,
We’ll hold onto the lessons we learned from you.