I look at a book like The Phoenix Project, written by some fairly respected software industry folks like Gene Kim, and they also recommend the opposite: that software development and IT operations actually are a lot like an industrial shop floor and benefit from being organized in an end-to-end pull flow like Kanban.

I look at Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank, or Lean Startup by Eric Ries, while they aren't specifically dictating a Kanban board in their work, they're clearly philosophically in the camp of a pull-based approach to organizing work and limiting work-in-progress.

So, what I haven't determined from your article is, what specifically is flawed with these authors views and my experiences? Am I being over-broad in their inclusion? My interprtation of your article this far is a well-meaning but under-argued philosophical aversion to being lumped in with other industrial engineering practices.

Edit: clarity

I've seen companies/projects with all of those things still fail because of a poor process. This is where something like Kanban can help, IMO. Not trivial to implement though.

This isn't really a criticism on the point your making in the article by the way, which I think is still valid. I find it weird too that software development is being shoehorned into a manufacturing job control system.