Are the New Ways of Working Really About Managing Projects Better?

It may be useful to mention that, IMHO, Agile started as and continues to be a product development approach, not a project management or delivery methodology, as it is presented by many training materials.
I see the new ways of working, aka change, imposed only at lower levels of the organisation, and that's sad for someone who still believes in Agile.

Stelian, I think your observation about change being imposed mainly at lower levels of the organization gets very close to the issue I am trying to explore.

I would make one distinction, though, around “new ways of working, aka change.”
Not every change necessarily constitutes a genuinely new way of working.
Teams can adopt new practices, roles, tools, or technologies while the organizational arrangements that shape their work remain largely unchanged.

That is why the asymmetry you describe matters.
If teams are expected to become more adaptive while authority, governance, decision rights, incentives, and learning mechanisms above and around them remain essentially the same, we may be changing how work is performed locally without changing the system that conditions what those teams can actually decide, learn from, or influence.

For me, that is also why the question goes beyond whether Agile is understood as product development, project management, or delivery.
The more consequential test is whether the organizational logic through which work is coordinated, governed, and translated into value has materially changed.

And perhaps there is an important boundary on the other side too: becoming more adaptive does not mean changing everything.
A genuinely adaptive organization also needs to know what should remain stable while changing what the context no longer justifies.

Syed, I agree, and I think the “around projects, not just within them” distinction is particularly important.

I would add one nuance: the two are not really separate systems.
Projects operate through interfaces with the wider organization, including authority, governance, resource allocation, incentives, decision-making, and learning.
Changing practices inside projects while leaving those interfaces essentially unchanged can therefore limit how much adaptation is actually possible.

At the same time, changing what surrounds projects is not sufficient by itself either.
New structures, governance mechanisms, or technologies can create another layer of change without necessarily improving the organization’s capacity to adapt.

For me, the stronger test is therefore whether changes within projects, around them, and at the interfaces between them enable the organization to respond to changing conditions while keeping authority, accountability, strategic direction, and learning coherent with one another and with the context.

Farshid, I particularly like your point that sometimes the most innovative move may be knowing what not to change.
I think that introduces an important boundary: adaptability should not be confused with continuous or maximum change.

I would add one nuance to the idea of better decisions as the test of a new way of working.
Better decision-making certainly matters, but it may not be sufficient by itself.
An organization can improve particular decisions without materially changing how work is coordinated and governed, how the organization learns, or how decisions are translated into outcomes.

For me, the deeper test is whether the new way of working strengthens the organization’s capacity to respond when conditions change, while preserving what remains justified and reconsidering what no longer does.
That includes decision-making, but also authority, governance, learning, incentives, and the ability to turn evidence into organizational action.

So perhaps genuine adaptability is not demonstrated by how much an organization changes, but by how well it can distinguish what should change, what should remain stable, and when new evidence warrants reconsidering either.