I've worked across probably 100+ companies over the last 30 years. The reality is that the implementation of "agile" has been mostly loosely interpreted and varies wildly across the spectrum of those companies. In most cases - not all - design and research were so deeply subordinated (or at times completely absent) that the VALUE design could offer was limited by the hurried nature of the process.

It's interesting that in all my years it's mostly the agile coaches, scrum masters, and engineering teams who feel agile is working while other disciplines feel it has failed them completely. I'd argue that there is a serious imbalance in the power structures of agile and scrum.

In the automotive industries (and physical product industries in general) design has a much more strategic role to play, usually sits in advance of the "manufacturing" process, and therefore gets the space and breathing room it needs to design usable products.

Most digital organizations I've worked with -- and I've worked with many -- subordinate design into the "manufacturing" process, often with little or no research applied, and expect cohesive products to be delivered. You can't think through the scope of a product, understand the needs of users, design "complete" solution, in 2 week increments.

You can agree or disagree with the article. But the reality is that in many places, agile and scrum are poorly implemented, not well understood (even often by those implementing them), and research is deprecated, and design is often sublimated into delivering fragments of artifacts to keep the engine of delivery running.