What Is Agile?

Agile is the ability to respond to change while controlling risk. It is a way of dealing with and succeeding in, an uncertain and changing environment. It is about understanding what is going on in your environment and adapting as you proceed.

Agile has emerged as a huge global movement. It enables organisations to succeed in a world that is increasingly volatile, uncertain complex and ambiguous. The rate of change has accelerated dramatically over the past 25 years. All indicators point to this quickening trend continuing. Today’s “fast enough” will likely not be fast enough in future. In order to remain competitive, organisations need a process that can help them keep up with this accelerating rate of change.

Agile frameworks like Scrum help organisations deliver products earlier, and at lower costs, giving them a competitive advantage in a fast-paced market. They are better able to rapidly adapt to meet the true needs of the market and their customers.

The Agile Manifesto

The Agile Manifesto was created in 2001. It was intended as a response to the heavyweight, documentation driven software development processes that were in common use at this time.

So what is Agile & Agility according to this manifesto? The values of the Agile Manifesto are:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

And while there may be value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more. This is where the focus should be placed.

There are also 12 supporting principles which provide further supporting details. You can learn more about the principles at in our Agile Principles post series. Starting with: Agile Principles – Simplicity

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