Contextual fitness for purpose
Traditional tools (intended as skills, practices, organization of work) used to deal with software products and projects originate from the
industrial-age where communication was very limited.
The new tools Lean & Agile add to the toolbox originates from the
information-age where a large communication bandwidth and a short response-time create the dynamic environment we are living in, where
unpredictability, uncertainty, interdependency reach a new level.
The good set of practices and a proper organization of the work for each product/project is determined by the characteristic of each specific product/project. This is why it's important to know and understand both the tools from the industrial-age and the tools from the information-age, to know understand experience and master practices from different methodologies and then being able to identify a good mix of tools that work well for each context.
This approach is called
contextual fitness for purpose as opposed to the
one-size-fits-all approaches.