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Agile

Define​

An iterative, incremental and highly flexible approach to designing and developing digital products

The term Agile was coined in 2001 in the Agile Manifesto. Agile is a highly flexible and pragmatic approach to delivering digital projects. It anticipates and embraces unpredictability and emphasizes close collaboration of a cross-functional team, evolving requirements, incremental and iterative development and continuous testing.

The approach aspires to deliver solutions that best meet customer needs With minimal costs, waste, and time. It contrasts with traditional waterfall approaches, which can be more linear, sequential and struggle to accommodate change.

There are multiple Agile frameworks. For instance, Dynamic System Model (DSDM) and Extreme Programming (XP) are frameworks that focus on software development. The popular Scrum framework suits software development and also broader project management.

Agile frameworks are generally tailored to the needs of the organizations using them, but tend to include:

  • Active customer involvement
  • Frequent, usually daily, communication
  • Close collaboration between stakeholders
  • A team that's empowered to make decisions
  • Evolving requirements and minimal documentation cycles (or sprints) resulting in small, incremental releases
  • Testing early and often throughout the project

Resources​