“It’s not so much the death of Agile that’s killing me, or death of Scrum. It’s the death of things like empowerment, the death of things like empiricism. Those are the things that frighten me in work.” – Nigel Baker
Nigel brings a challenge that resonates across the entire Agile community: the so-called “death of Agile.” But he quickly reframes the conversation in a way that cuts much deeper. The real issue isn’t whether teams call what they do Scrum or Agile—it’s that the industry is decaying back past waterfall to what Nigel calls feudalism, where a single “great man” dictates and everyone else follows.
He distinguishes between two kinds of popularity: the number of people saying they’re doing Agile versus the number of people actually liking what they’re doing—a gap he compares to Jira’s massive subscriber base versus its actual user satisfaction. Through this lens, Nigel introduces his famous “Nigel Scale”—a joke he made on a Scrum Alliance forum 20 years ago that people took entirely seriously. The scale separates Scrum into three levels: core practices that break things if you skip them (like a surgeon disinfecting hands), contextual good practices that may or may not apply (like story points), and persistent anti-patterns that never work no matter how many times people try (like normalizing team measurements across teams).
Vasco and Nigel converge on an experiment: treat Scrum adoption itself as a backlog of changes, introducing practices incrementally based on feedback—but always with a compelling vision of why the change matters.
Self-reflection Question: When you hear “Agile is dead,” are you defending a framework, or are you advocating for the underlying principles of empowerment and empiricism that teams genuinely need?
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About Nigel Baker
Nigel Baker is a seasoned agile coach with a keen intellect, warm creativity, and thoughtful humour. With a career spanning software engineering, consultancy and global training, he inspires teams to thrive, not just perform. Outside work, he loves bold ideas, good conversation and a life well lived.
You can link with Nigel Baker on LinkedIn. You can also find Nigel at AgileBear.com.
Recovering from failure, or difficult moments is a critical skill for Scrum Masters. Not only because of us, but also because the teams, and stakeholders we work with will also face these moments! We need inspiring stories to help them, and ourselves! The Bungsu Story, is an inspiring story by Marcus Hammarberg which shows how a Coach can help organizations recover even from the most disastrous situations! Learn how Marcus helped The Bungsu, a hospital in Indonesia, recover from near-bankruptcy, twice! Using Lean and Agile methods to rebuild an organization and a team! An inspiring story you need to know about! 
Kulsoom is passionate about constructing sustainable, resilient, and high-performing teams, consistently delivering value to customers through the transformative power of Agility. She embodies a leadership style that inspires, empowers, and fosters the growth of her colleagues. Kulsoom enjoys reading and has also dabbled in blogging.
As Scrum Master we work with change continuously! Do you have your own change framework that provides the guidance, and queues you need when working with change? 
Kaisa is an Agile coach working for a large multinational software company. Originally from Finland, her thirst for learning new things and passion for languages led her to live in Sweden, and Scotland before settling in Montreal, Canada. She is an avid Redditor who spends her free time reading, knitting, investing and playing with her two daughters.