Agile at its core is a reducto-ad-minimum of project management, with a focus on talking to your customer first, then implementing features.
Originally, Agile was a manifesto:
> We are uncovering better ways of developing
> software by doing it and helping others do it.
> Through this work we have come to value:
>
> Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
> Working software over comprehensive documentation
> Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
> Responding to change over following a plan
> That is, while there is value in the items on
> the right, we value the items on the left more.
The idea being that teams that talk to each other are better than teams focused purely on "doing the motions" of their process, software that works is better than well documented software that doesn't, knowing what your customer needs rather than nitpicking over the details of contracts is more effective, and accepting that things will change and working accordingly produces a better product than something developed exactly to plan.
The core implementation of an Agile system is one where you have regular requirements meetings, build a product that can always be shipped (for some definition of "ship"), and value a stable product over glamorous feature creep. This manifests itself as two core loops: One where small, incremental changes are made in the smaller loop, and one where larger changes are discussed and planned over time, but subject to change.
Today, Agile has morphed to consume a bunch of aspects from Scrum, Extreme Programming, Lean, and Kanban. It's to the point where most people don't know the core tenants of Agile, say they're doing Agile, and then pass on this mutated version of Agile along to others who adapt it.
Originally, Agile was a manifesto:
> We are uncovering better ways of developing
> software by doing it and helping others do it.
> Through this work we have come to value:
>
> Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
> Working software over comprehensive documentation
> Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
> Responding to change over following a plan
> That is, while there is value in the items on
> the right, we value the items on the left more.
The idea being that teams that talk to each other are better than teams focused purely on "doing the motions" of their process, software that works is better than well documented software that doesn't, knowing what your customer needs rather than nitpicking over the details of contracts is more effective, and accepting that things will change and working accordingly produces a better product than something developed exactly to plan.
The core implementation of an Agile system is one where you have regular requirements meetings, build a product that can always be shipped (for some definition of "ship"), and value a stable product over glamorous feature creep. This manifests itself as two core loops: One where small, incremental changes are made in the smaller loop, and one where larger changes are discussed and planned over time, but subject to change.
Today, Agile has morphed to consume a bunch of aspects from Scrum, Extreme Programming, Lean, and Kanban. It's to the point where most people don't know the core tenants of Agile, say they're doing Agile, and then pass on this mutated version of Agile along to others who adapt it.