Good piece.

I'm a firm believer that having an understanding of methodologies is a good thing. Really try 'em out before starting in on the modifications - after all, most of 'em started b/c someone had a problem that that got solved - and others picked up on it. Poor/lazy leaders are too quick to use the "framework" term 'cuz it gets them off the hook from having to know much.

Using your cake analogy - follow the recipe precisely as written first. Do a review - how does it taste? Meet your expectations? Room for improvement? It might be perfect - in which case you've saved yourself a lot of time and trouble trying to reinvent the wheel.

In the product world - the methodology you prefer might not work for the type of project you're working on. Your team or stakeholders might not be the best fit - and I'd hazard a guess that with the speed at which product teams are being pushed to work, too many methodologies ending being a case of process over progress.

Finally, IMHO a framework isn't an excuse to be lazy - to be effective it requires all members of your team to understand their roles and expectations. That's hard and doesn't give much to fall back on when results are less than stellar - in effect, you ARE the framework for you team.

My 2 cents, anyway