The end of agile as we know it

Context: Ever since the Agile Manifesto was introduced in 2001, the agile principles have supported software development teams in continuous delivery of valuable software. With its focus on customer collaboration, and with a promise to help organizations respond to change, it is fair to say that the agile paradigm changed software development and that it, over the years, has become the method of choice worldwide. Objectives: However, despite more than two decades of efforts being spent on adopting and scaling agile practices, companies still don't experience the benefits they had expected. In this paper, we study the challenges companies experience and why existing agile practices fall short in supporting development of large-scale software-intensive embedded systemMethods: This study employs a qualitative approach using multi-case study research as the method. We report on more than ten years of empirical research in close collaboration with companies developing software-intensive embedded systems. Through workshop sessions, frequent meetings and interviews, we explore the challenges these companies experience in their adoption and use of agile development practices.Results: In the paper, we identify the key challenges that companies in the software-intensive embedded systems domain experience in relation to agile practices. To address these we present RADICAL, a strawman proposal for what a new paradigm could look like.Conclusion: We conclude that for the case companies involved in our research, there is a mismatch between the original agile principles and the reality of product development they face. Hence, there is a need for a new paradigm that supports not only development, but also scaling and monetization of software-intensive embedded systems.