What is Agile?

Agile is a way of building software in short cycles, shipping working pieces early and changing the plan as you learn.

How does agile work?

Work is cut into small units and pulled into short iterations, often one or two weeks. Each iteration ends with something that runs. The team demos it, gets feedback, and reprioritizes the next batch. Scrum, Kanban, and XP are the common frameworks. The frameworks differ, the loop does not.

Why does agile matter?

Startups are wrong about what customers want, and the only cheap way to find out is to ship. Agile shortens the distance between a guess and evidence. It also exposes bad news early, when a two week miss is still a two week miss instead of a two quarter one.

Where did agile come from?

Seventeen developers met in Utah in 2001 and wrote the Agile Manifesto. Four values, twelve principles, one page. The first value sets the tone: individuals and interactions over processes and tools.

How do you use agile well?

Keep the loop, drop the theater. Ship something usable every cycle. Cut scope, not quality, when you run out of time. Let the people doing the work size it. Kill the ceremony that stops producing information. A standup that no one learns from is a status meeting wearing a costume.

Bottom line: Agile is a feedback loop, and any ritual that does not shorten it is overhead.

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