OK. Slightly - slightly - less half-baked thoughts about devops.
At the time of the Agile Manifesto, Agile's big competitor was the Rational Unified Process (RUP). It was a process that was tailorable to any situation. But it required tailoring to any given situation.
The intro to XP Explained was a breath of fresh air because it sharply limited its scope: small teams, requirements in flux. Then it said, prescriptively: such teams should do these N things, learn to do them really well, and leave all the "well, we're special because..." for later.
