Stelian ROMANProject Manager| MicroSafetyCarlingford, New South Wales, Australia
In a very competitive certification market and as organisations seek to scale Agile practices, many turn to structured frameworks and borrow from established methodologies like Lean Six Sigma. While using traditional practices and tools from traditional Project, Portfolio, Program Management, and Lean Six Sigma, ethical issues arise when Lean Six Sigma concepts are copied, misrepresented as new Agile practices, or used without proper attribution. These concerns become more acute when such practices diverge from the values of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. Unknown to many Agile practitioners, Agile emerged as an American response to the success of Lean Six Sigma in Japan, and whilst there is value in improving quality and reducing cost, standardisation is against the Agile core value of responding to change.
Luis BrancoCEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, LdªCarcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Yes, I have seen this tension emerge in Agile transformations, especially when organizations scale quickly and adopt practices from Lean, Lean Six Sigma, Project Management, quality management, or flow-based approaches.
In my view, the issue is not that Agile incorporates ideas from other disciplines. Management knowledge has always evolved through adaptation, integration, and recombination.
The ethical concern begins when those practices are presented as “new Agile” without enough transparency about: • Where they originated, • Why they are being adopted, • What problem they are intended to solve, • What trade-offs they introduce.
This is especially important in a competitive certification and framework market, where language, branding, and originality claims can easily shape perception.
I also think we need to distinguish carefully between Lean, Lean Six Sigma, traditional management approaches, and Agile. They have different origins and purposes, even if they later influenced one another significantly.
Standardization is not inherently anti-Agile. Some structure can support coordination, learning, quality, and flow at scale.
The real risk begins when structure stops enabling adaptation and starts constraining it.
At that point, the issue is no longer only intellectual property. It becomes a question of transparency, trust, authenticity, and organizational integrity.
An important and valuable discussion for the profession. Saving Changes...
Program Manager| HARPER SRLSanto Domingo / Distrito Nacional, Dominican Republic
I agree that combining practices from different disciplines is not the issue by itself. Most organizations naturally adapt methods over time depending on their context and challenges. What I’ve seen become problematic is when scaling introduces so much structure, reporting, and standardization that teams lose flexibility in practice. Sometimes the language still sounds Agile, but the environment starts feeling much more control-driven than adaptive.
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1 reply by Stelian ROMAN
May 20, 2026 1:18 AM
Stelian ROMAN
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Lissette Indhira Pimentel Sosa that's why when we speak about Agile transformations, we need to baseline the outcome before and after. Agile is not a scope in itself, the bottom line is.
Saving Changes...
Stelian ROMANProject Manager| MicroSafetyCarlingford, New South Wales, Australia
Luis Branco "I also think we need to distinguish carefully between Lean, Lean Six Sigma, traditional management approaches, and Agile. They have different origins and purposes, even if they later influenced one another significantly." That's in my experience the problem with some 'Agile' Coaches. They are refurbished consultants with little knowledge about Lean, Agile, management or Product development. A few weeks course doesn't make one a good coach. To be a good Agile coach, you need practical experience as a team manager and as a product manager., not a certificate. Saving Changes...
Stelian ROMANProject Manager| MicroSafetyCarlingford, New South Wales, Australia
May 19, 2026 8:55 AM
Replying to Lissette Indhira Pimentel Sosa
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I agree that combining practices from different disciplines is not the issue by itself. Most organizations naturally adapt methods over time depending on their context and challenges. What I’ve seen become problematic is when scaling introduces so much structure, reporting, and standardization that teams lose flexibility in practice. Sometimes the language still sounds Agile, but the environment starts feeling much more control-driven than adaptive.
Lissette Indhira Pimentel Sosa that's why when we speak about Agile transformations, we need to baseline the outcome before and after. Agile is not a scope in itself, the bottom line is. Saving Changes...
Luis BrancoCEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, LdªCarcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Stelian ROMAN I agree that practical experience matters enormously.
Coaching teams, managing products, dealing with delivery pressure, trade-offs, conflict, prioritization, and organizational reality cannot be learned only through short certification paths.
At the same time, I would be careful not to reduce the issue to a simple distinction between certificates and experience.
I have also seen highly experienced professionals apply Agile mechanically, without a deeper understanding of systems thinking, product dynamics, flow, organizational behavior, or adaptive leadership.
The deeper issue may be that Agile coaching scaled commercially faster than the profession developed the operational maturity and conceptual depth required to sustain that growth.
When frameworks become products, certifications become market signals, and scaling becomes the priority, there is a natural risk of simplification, rebranding, and loss of conceptual integrity.
In practice, good coaching usually requires a combination of:
• Practical experience,
• Contextual judgment,
• Understanding of management and product systems,
• Facilitation capability,
• Intellectual honesty about the origins, strengths, and limits of the practices being used.
That combination is much harder to certify than a framework alone.
Yes, many organizations face intellectual property issues when Agile frameworks copy Lean Six Sigma or traditional project management practices without proper credit. For example, some companies rename existing Lean improvement methods as “new Agile models,” which creates ethical and legal concerns about originality and attribution. Saving Changes...
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