🎬 Introduction
Sprint. Review. Retro. Repeat.
Another cycle. Another iteration.
But something’s missing.
In many “agile” teams, a strange kind of collective amnesia sets in.
The ceremonies remain. The tools are used.
But the why behind it all gets buried under velocity charts and Jira tickets.
This is what I call Agile Amnesia:
A silent drift from purpose, disguised as high performance.
🧠What it looks like
- Teams focused on delivery, not value
- Dailies become status updates, not collaboration boosters
- Retros become rituals, not reflection spaces
- The product backlog grows, but the vision blurs
They are doing Agile.
But they’ve stopped being agile.
🧩 Real case
At a SaaS company, a product team had one of the highest throughput scores in the organization.
But customer satisfaction had dropped 22% over the last quarter.
Why?
They were shipping more features, faster than ever—
But no one had challenged why they were building them.
After interviewing team members, a clear pattern emerged:
“We’re not sure who we’re building for anymore.”
“We just focus on hitting sprint goals.”
“The vision used to excite us. Now it’s just tasks.”
Agile had become a process.
Not a mindset.
🔍 A metaphor: the agile treadmill
Imagine getting on a treadmill to train for a mountain hike.
You walk, you run, you sweat.
But if you never get off the treadmill, you’re just moving without direction.
That’s Agile Amnesia: a team in motion, but going nowhere meaningful.
🧠Four signals of Agile Amnesia
- No one questions the backlog anymore
The list is taken as gospel, not as hypothesis. - Velocity is celebrated more than impact
“We closed 28 story points!” But… did they matter? - Retros lose soul
If people say “same as last time,” it’s not reflection—it’s fatigue. - Customers vanish from conversations
If the only mention of the user is during sprint review, disconnection is guaranteed.
🛠️ How to revive the “why”
- Reground every sprint in impact
Start planning with: “What problem are we solving and for whom?” - Bring real stories into the room
Invite a customer. Read a review. Show a case. Make it human. - Redesign retros as catalysts, not complaints
Use them to imagine, reconnect, realign—not just fix annoyances. - Kill zombie rituals
If a ceremony feels dead, stop. Reframe. Reboot. Or delete.
đźš« What to avoid
- Obsessing over tools
Tools are containers. Culture is what fills them. - Agile theatre
Stand-ups and Kanbans look nice. But if there’s no ownership or learning… it’s just performance. - Pretending “done” means “useful”
Something can be shipped and still be irrelevant.
✨ Final thought
Agile isn’t a checklist.
It’s a constant act of remembering:
Who are we serving?
Why are we building?
What do we want to learn?
A team that forgets its “why” becomes a team efficient at the wrong things.