Olaf L.-A. was cursing the space between the ‘G’ and ‘H’ keys on his workstation. He had just spent 43 minutes trying to extract a single, stubborn coffee ground that had wedged itself into the mechanical switch, a leftover from a frantic 3 a.m. debugging session. It was a small, gritty reminder of the friction that had come to define his existence. As a medical equipment installer, Olaf was used to precision, but lately, he had been pulled into the ‘digital transformation’ wing of the hospital’s logistics department. He stood there, the smell of isopropyl alcohol still stinging his nostrils, watching the whiteboard in the conference room. On that board, 73 neon-green sticky notes were arranged in a chaotic grid that someone had the audacity to call a ‘Sprint Backlog.’

In the room, 13 people were standing in a circle. They called it a stand-up, but most were leaning heavily against the walls or slouching over their phones. The lead project manager, a woman who had attended a 3-day certification course and now spoke exclusively in metaphors involving rowing and ship-building, was asking for ‘blockers.’ The irony was thick enough to choke on. The entire methodology was the blocker. We had transitioned from a world of long-term planning to a world of 13-day bursts of panic, and we were calling it ‘Agile’ to make the chaos feel intentional. It wasn’t adaptability; it was a lack of a map disguised as a preference for exploration. Olaf L.-A. watched as a developer explained that they couldn’t finish the API integration because the requirements had changed 3 times since the previous Tuesday. The project manager nodded, noted it down, and suggested they ‘pivot’ the priority for the next 23 hours.