To my mind, there is a fundamental difference between doing and being Agile. When somebody says his company is doing Agile, for me it basically means that Agile methodology was imposed to that company. There could be various reasons for that e.g. Agile is trendy or other competitors on the market are Agile, as well.
Actually, this whole situation reminds me a story about pig in a suit. People were willing to transform pig into a gentleman. They dressed it in the suit and started to call it Sir. The thing was, it was still the pig eating potatoes from the feeding trough.
To be fairly honest, no one can do Agile. Basically, agile is an adjective so you simply can't do it. Instead, you can be agile and that matters, not only from linguistic point of view, but also from semantic one. Being Agile is like a culture, religion or something built-in into your mind and soul. It's a particular mindset you are applying to every decision in your project or life. It's something more than process or methodology. It's the way of life, a way of thinking and approaching problems. It's exactly what Chinese call "tao" or "dao" and Japanese "do". It all means the way, route or path. There are couple of things Eastern cultures are doing in a right way. One of them is naming convention. It's simple and self explanatory. For instance the whole philosophy related to Agile may be called AgileDo or Tao of Agile (i.e. The Way of Agile).
Company adopting Agile should also adopt all Agile values and principles. It's a simple choice between everything and nothing. You can't take a couple of bits and bobs from values, a bunch of principles and thinking that Bob's you uncle. No, you have to take them all.
Next time, when a headhunter, recruiter or anybody else calls you, remind yourself about pig in the suit and answer one, simple question. Would you like to work for the pig in the suit and call it Sir?
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