@profoundlynerdy Agile is supposed to be empirical. That is the other end of the spectrum of religion, which is about faith and belief.

How did we get so far from the original ideas?

It could be simply that empiricism is difficult. Once you have a tool like any of the agile practices that lets you see problems it’s on you to take action to fix them. It’s infinitely easier to not do anything differently and say the tool doesn’t work.