"Make it up as you go" may be fine for kids bedtime stories.... but when it's used in software development (which is often the case when "agile" is mis-implemented) it's a recipe for disaster. It ignores all the hard-learned lessons that history has proven about what does and doesn't work.
Indeed, I agree, although I'd argue that I do try to learn as much as possible from the experiences of others. I only very roughly covered what "make it up as you go along" might mean as far as agile is concerned, because so much has been written on the subject and I assumed some familiarity. Perhaps I could have emphasised that more!
