The manifesto itself says:
> Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale
I get the impression as to what you're witnessing is, water-scrum-fall...
See: https://i.imgur.com/6eqk7eF.png
On the flip-side, your team of renegades managed to deliver in 4 weeks, while being great, I would question how sustainable that is. Also I get the impression they had skin in the game.
> what I see today in modern practice looks nothing like what was intended
You're 100% right. I don't think it means agile should die, I think it means people have forgot what it set out to do.
Scrum existed before agile and is a framework to help people work in an agile way. However people have got too wrapped up in the orthodoxy and have forgot what agile is actually about.
My mantra is simple: Release early, release often, listen to the customer
When I first got into software development it was because of open source software. On the SourceForge website, under the “Promoting your project” section, you’ll see it say “Release early, release often. Frequent releases state loudly that your project is alive”.
Years later, I learned that this philosophy was popularised by Eric S. Raymond in his 1997 essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Only, his version also says “listen to the customer”, an important part that’s all too easy to forget.
