The phrase “plan -> build (iterate) -> ship” is carrying a lot of water in this article. It’s unfortunately vague. Scrum and Kanban, which are each called out separately, are also plan -> iterate -> ship methods.
Reading between the lines, I think the distinction the author is making is actually between named methods and unnamed methods, some of which are customized variants of Agile methods, and some of which are entirely ad-hoc. For example, Spotify has a very disciplined approach to development that involves coaches and Agile principles, but is listed as plan -> iterate -> build in the article.
The result is that plan -> iterate -> ship basically means “other,” which makes it hard to draw any conclusions.
There’s also an unfortunate lack of distinction between Scrum implementations, which range from lightweight and team-driven to heavyweight and dysfunctional (mostly the latter, to be fair). The author uses the term “heavyweight” to describe Scrum, but it’s not clear that their survey respondents have the same biases.
Ultimately, I think what the author has discovered is less a difference between processes and more a difference between Theory X and Theory Y management. [1]
Reading between the lines, I think the distinction the author is making is actually between named methods and unnamed methods, some of which are customized variants of Agile methods, and some of which are entirely ad-hoc. For example, Spotify has a very disciplined approach to development that involves coaches and Agile principles, but is listed as plan -> iterate -> build in the article.
The result is that plan -> iterate -> ship basically means “other,” which makes it hard to draw any conclusions.
There’s also an unfortunate lack of distinction between Scrum implementations, which range from lightweight and team-driven to heavyweight and dysfunctional (mostly the latter, to be fair). The author uses the term “heavyweight” to describe Scrum, but it’s not clear that their survey respondents have the same biases.
Ultimately, I think what the author has discovered is less a difference between processes and more a difference between Theory X and Theory Y management. [1]
[1] https://www.jamesshore.com/v2/books/aoad2/management