What is Agile?

I’d like to think that agile is an umbrella term of iterative ways of working. This is not limited to software development only, in fact it can be applied to many facets of business (and in life should you wish to do so).

Agile is a way to achieve early feedback and early business value. It’s a way to reap what we sow as soon as anything is available. It’s a way to ensure that we are on the right course and gain any course correcting feedback as soon as possible. Most importantly, it’s a way to ensure that we can respond and anticipate any changes in today’s voltile business ocean.

Is agile a methodology? It’s not really. Implementations of agile such as scrum, kanban, xp, crystal are the methodologies. The ones that I used most are scrum and kanban.

These methodologies are the guides that business can follow. The objective is of course to gain business agility and to have agile culture within the company. This is why when anyone said to me that they are doing agile or implementing agile, it never rings true. We cannot do agile, we can only become agile. We can only embrace agility and making it a part of our company culture.

In a nutshell, agile is really a way of working, culture and commitment. The journey to become agile itself can be started by consulting agile coaches which will analyse and implement the appropriate methodology for the company. The application of the methodoly itself cannot be done by the book. Remember that they are guide rails and every single companies in the world is different.