While browsing Agile forums on LinkedIn i found interesting and easy question “What is Agile?”. My first thought was - it’s easy … and i realized that even though i have a lot of thoughts on that, but i realized that it is not fully clear for me. So, main goal of this post is to clarify it for myself 🙂
First of all Agile is an alternative way of software development which is based on principles behind Agile Manifesto:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
The suggested principles are very simple and flexible, but very difficult to apply. I personally like this one most of all:
At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behaviour accordingly.
This last principle fully explains to me “What is Agile?” - it means you are always seeking for improvement and you will change if environment changes around you. So, it is not a methodology (as i read somewhere), but it is the way of thinking and working, a mindset.
Everything started from the desire of improving software development process, but such way of thinking can be applied to whole organization. Because these principles only describe how to tackle problems in the best way.
Agile is not a methodology, process or something else. It’s a mindset!