What is Agile?

Agile is the ability to create and respond to change. It is a way of dealing with,
and ultimately succeeding in, an uncertain and turbulent environment.
The authors of the Agile Manifesto chose “Agile” as the label for this whole
idea because that word represented the adaptiveness and response to
change which was so important to their approach.
It’s really about thinking through how you can understand what’s going on in
the environment that you’re in today, identify what uncertainty you’re facing,
and figure out how you can adapt to that as you go along.

What is Agile Software Development?

Agile software development is more than frameworks such
as Scrum, Extreme Programming, or Feature-Driven Development (FDD).
Agile software development is more than practices such as pair
programming, test-driven development, stand-ups, planning sessions,
and sprints.
Agile software development is an umbrella term for a set of frameworks and
practices based on the values and principles expressed in the Manifesto for
Agile Software Development and the 12 Principles behind it. When you
approach software development in a particular manner, it’s generally good to
live by these values and principles and use them to help figure out the right
things to do given your particular context.
One thing that separates Agile from other approaches to software
development is the focus on the people doing the work and how they work
together. Solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing
cross-functional teams utilizing the appropriate practices for their context.
There’s a big focus in the Agile software development community on
collaboration and the self-organizing team.
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t managers. It means that teams have the
ability to figure out how they’re going to approach things on their own.
It means that those teams are cross-functional. Those teams don’t have to
have specific roles involved so much as that when you get the team together,
you make sure that you have all the right skill sets on the team.
There still is a place for managers. Managers make sure team members
have, or obtain, the right skill sets. Managers provide the environment that
allows the team to be successful. Managers mostly step back and let their
team figure out how they are going to deliver products, but they step in when
the teams try but are unable to resolve issues.
When most teams and organizations start doing Agile development, they
focus on the practices that help with collaboration and organizing the work,
which is great. However, another key set of practices that are not as
frequently followed but should be are specific technical practices that directly
deal with developing software in a way that helps your team deal with
uncertainty. Those technical practices are essential and something you
shouldn’t overlook.

A Short History of Agile

Here is a look at how Agile emerged, how it acquired the label Agile, and
where it went from there. It’s important to take a look at where Agile software
development came from to get an understanding of where things are at today.
Click To Read The History Of Agile

Agile is a Mindset
Ultimately, Agile is a mindset informed by the Agile Manifesto’s values and
principles. Those values and principles provide guidance on how to create
and respond to change and how to deal with uncertainty.
You could say that the first sentence of the Agile Manifesto encapsulates the
whole idea: “We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing
it and helping others do it.”
When you face uncertainty, try something you think might work, get feedback,
and adjust accordingly.
Keep the values and principles in mind when you do this. Let your context
guide which frameworks, practices, and techniques you use to collaborate
with your team and deliver value to your customers.

What are Agile Methodologies?

If Agile is a mindset, then what does that say about the idea of Agile
methodologies? To answer this question, you may find it helpful to have a
clear definition of methodology.
Alistair Cockburn suggested that a methodology is the set of conventions that
a team agrees to follow. That means that each team will have its own
methodology, which will be different in either small or large ways from every
other team’s methodology.
So Agile methodologies are the conventions that a team chooses to follow in
a way that follows Agile values and principles.
“Wait,” you’re probably saying, “I thought Scrum and XP were Agile
methodologies.” Alistair applied the term framework to those concepts. They
certainly were born from a single team’s methodology, but they became
frameworks when they were generalized to be used by other teams. Those
frameworks help inform where a team starts with their methodology, but they
shouldn’t be the team’s methodology. The team will always need to adapt its
use of a framework to fit properly in its context.
What about Agile Project Management or
Agile Business Analysis?
As Agile Software Development became more popular, people involved with
software development activities but who didn’t personally develop software
looked for some way to figure out how these Agile ideas applied in their line of
work.
The Agile Manifesto and the 12 Principles were written by a group of software
developers (and a tester) to address issues that software developers faced.
When you think of Agile as a mindset, that mindset can be applied to other
activities.
When you do that, Agile becomes an adjective. It describes how you perform
some activity. It does not create a new methodology for the reasons explained
above.
When you want to understand Agile project management, ask “How might we
perform project management in a way that allows us to create and respond to
change and deal with uncertainty?” Agile Alliance and Project Management
Institute (PMI) explored this question through a joint effort to create the Agile
Practice Guide (Available to Agile Alliance Members).
When you want to understand Agile business analysis, ask “How might we
perform business analysis in a way that allows us to create and respond to
change and deal with uncertainty?” Agile Alliance and International Institute of
Business Analysis (IIBA) explored this question through a joint effort to create
the Agile Extension to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (Available to
Agile Alliance Members).

What is Business Agility?

The two concepts noted above are examples of an attempt to move Agile
“outside of software.” Those efforts have resulted recently in the Business
Agility movement.
If you extend the idea of Agile as a mindset, then people seeking Business
Agility ask themselves, “How might we structure and operate our organization
in a way that allows us to create and respond to change and deal with
uncertainty?”
You might say that business agility is a recognition that in order for people in
an organization to operate with an Agile mindset, the entire organization
needs to support that mindset. Agile software development was never truly
Agile until the organization changed its structure and operations to work in an
uncertain environment.

Key Agile Concepts

Below are a few key Agile concepts. You can see more in our glossary
section.
User Stories: In consultation with the customer or product owner, the team
divides up the work to be done into functional increments called “user stories.”
Each user story is expected to yield a contribution to the value of the overall
product. (see more)
Daily Meeting: Each day at the same time, the team meets so as to bring
everyone up to date on the information that is vital for coordination: each team
members briefly describes any “completed” contributions and any obstacles
that stand in their way. (see more)
Personas: When the project calls for it – for instance when user experience is
a major factor in project outcomes – the team crafts detailed, synthetic
biographies of fictitious users of the future product: these are called
“personas.” (see more)
Team: A “team” in the Agile sense is a small group of people, assigned to the
same project or effort, nearly all of them on a full-time basis. A small minority
of team members may be part-time contributors, or may have competing
responsibilities. (see more)
Incremental Development: Nearly all Agile teams favor an incremental
development strategy; in an Agile context, this means that each successive
version of the product is usable, and each builds upon the previous version by
adding user-visible functionality. (see more)
Iterative Development: Agile projects are iterative insofar as they intentionally
allow for “repeating” software development activities, and for potentially
“revisiting” the same work products. (see more)
Milestone Retrospective: Once a project has been underway for some time,
or at the end of the project, all of the team’s permanent members (not just the
developers) invests from one to three days in a detailed analysis of the
project’s significant events. (see more)

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