How well a team works together depends on far more than how smart the component engineers are. One clever engineer may be sufficient for a Suduku problem, but it is a matter of scale.
This fellow is basically arguing that we don't need government because people get along just fine on their own. Which is absolutely true on an individual scale, and not at all true as soon as two people live next door to one another.
In my experience 90% of software problems are social problems. He seems to care only about technical problems, and assumes those are solved by the magic of intelligence. I believe that if you can not explain to someone else how to do what you do, you aren't actually a master of your craft. Appeals to hire smarter coders sound incredibly hollow unless they are accompanied by techniques to make the average coder smarter.
There are much better critiques of Agile out there, mostly having to do with how it has been sold. I'm not sure what he thinks he is contributing to the discussion.
Any process can be harmful. It can also be incredibly useful, and the lack of process is at least as harmful as process applied badly. I recommend the book "The Checklist Manifestos" for examples. It proposes that the goal of process is to handle routine complexity and make cooperation routine, leaving human attention and effort free to focus on the actual hard problems.
In my experience 90% of software problems are social problems. He seems to care only about technical problems, and assumes those are solved by the magic of intelligence. I believe that if you can not explain to someone else how to do what you do, you aren't actually a master of your craft. Appeals to hire smarter coders sound incredibly hollow unless they are accompanied by techniques to make the average coder smarter.
There are much better critiques of Agile out there, mostly having to do with how it has been sold. I'm not sure what he thinks he is contributing to the discussion.
Any process can be harmful. It can also be incredibly useful, and the lack of process is at least as harmful as process applied badly. I recommend the book "The Checklist Manifestos" for examples. It proposes that the goal of process is to handle routine complexity and make cooperation routine, leaving human attention and effort free to focus on the actual hard problems.