Common Language and "A"gile

In the aviation industry, their terminology is universally agreed upon and universally understood. So, whether an Air France Pilot is landing in Warsaw or a Lufthansa Pilot is landing in Denver, the terminology used by the Pilot of Air France or Luftansa and the ATC at Warsaw or Denver is identical, and the language is the same, English.   

In the knowledge industry, where the raw material is nothing but ideas & thoughts, it is utmost important that communication is crisp and w/o any corruption. 

Why am I thinking about this today?
Because I have been seeing too many scholarly articles again and again for too many years on the same subjects like... 

- What is a User Story
- Can Testing Story be treated as a User Story
- Can we assign Story Points for a Bug
- Relation between Epic & User Story 
- DoD vs DoR
- Common misunderstandings about the role of a Scrum Master
- Confusion between Product Backlog & Sprint Backlog
- Whether Agile is a framework or a methodology or a mindset or yada yada yada.

Sometimes I think Agile WoW is no more Agile Ways of Working; it has become Agile Ways of Wording.

Can you imagine 2 people in *ANY OTHER FIELD* working for 20 years *WITHOUT*  having a common language and common understanding about the terms they use on a daily basis? 
‘A’gile professionals have managed that unbelievable feat. 

Identify Herbie in your team

Remember The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt?
Remember Herbie and his overweight backpack?
No doubt Herbie had good intentions when he packed lots of canned food & iron skillet.
He must have thought that the canned food and skillet would help him on his hike. But that turned out to be the problem for him, and he turned out to be the bottleneck for his team.

Are you in the business of building software?
Are you shipping something valuable fast enough?
If yes, then congratulations. You have achieved something that thousands of teams strive for.

But if you are not, or if you strive for more, then maybe there is a Herbie in your team.
In your case, your Herbie will not be a person, but the canned food and the skillet will be taxing your team for sure.
In your case, the iron skillet will be in the form of pompous, nebulous, impressive, and weighty terminology.
In your case, the canned food will be in the form of canned processes & ceremonies, in the form of meetings with rigid structure, in the form of a warning that your processes are immutable, in the form of a waiting period for the next version of THE GUIDE, which allows you to change your thinking.
Maybe your Herbie is carrying tins of canned food, whereas a few energy bars would have worked better.

In The Goal, Alex Rogo took all the canned food and the skillet from Herbie and distributed them among all the boys.
In your case, you should simply discard it.

Of course, one should not go on a hike using just floaters.
If you want ultralight gear to help your endeavor of shipping something valuable fast enough, talk to me.
I have ultralight gear for you.
The same gear with which we built something, which is being used by dozens of Fortune500 Orgs.