Agile disease or sour grapes?

LD shared with me Jonathan Kohl’s blog post – The Agile Disease.

Jonathan’s argues that:

• the good parts of agile are just common sense
• agile is a fad-diet, religious-cult-inspired, money-making exercise it is for a group of consultants

To me, it seemed like he has more problems with agile consultants than the principles of agile software development itself. Also, his admission of being “an original signatory to the manifesto” makes me wonder if this is case of "sour grapes".

I must admit that this is not first time I have heard people arguing that agile principles are common sense. But, hey who said it’s a rocket science? And why it has to be complicated to be useful? Common sense really is not very common :-)

I liked Bob Martin’s comments:

• Do some of us make money from the effort? Of course. I imagine even the author of this screed makes some money from his screeding (whether directly or indirectly). So what? Making money is an honorable activity."
• "As for Agile being “Common Sense”, gosh _we_ thought so too! It turns out, however, that there are a lot of folks out there who have been taught and trained otherwise, and who need their common sense perception refactored."
• "Sorry if I sound harsh, but I’m not feeling particularly charitable at the moment..."

What do you think about Agile, common sense and the arguments of Jonathan?