The Agile Manifesto is founded on twelve key principles that guide the Agile approach to software development. These principles focus on customer satisfaction, embracing change, frequent delivery, collaboration, and simplicity among others. Let’s explore these principles with examples:
- Customer Satisfaction Through Early and Continuous Delivery: Agile emphasizes delivering valuable software to customers early and continuously. For instance, a software team might release a basic version of a product to gather user feedback quickly, then iteratively update it based on the feedback.
- Welcoming Changing Requirements: Agile teams are adaptable to changing requirements, even late in development. This could be seen in a project where a team revises an application’s features in response to market changes, ensuring the product remains competitive.
- Frequent Delivery of Working Software: Agile teams aim to deliver working software frequently, from a few weeks to a few months, with a preference for shorter timelines. An example is a web development team deploying updates to a website every two weeks.
- Collaboration Between Business People and Developers: Agile stresses the importance of daily cooperation between business stakeholders and developers. This could manifest as regular meetings between the product owner and the development team to discuss priorities and feedback.
- Supporting and Trusting the Team: Agile relies on motivated individuals. Teams are given the environment and support they need and are trusted to get the job done, like allowing a team to choose the best technical approach for a project.
- Face-to-Face Conversation: Agile values direct communication, considering face-to-face conversation the most efficient and effective method of conveying information. An example is a daily stand-up meeting where team members discuss their progress and challenges.
- Working Software as the Primary Measure of Progress: In Agile, progress is measured by the delivery of functional software, not just meeting milestones. For example, a software feature is not considered ‘complete’ until it is fully functional and tested.
- Sustainable Development: Agile promotes a sustainable working pace, ensuring that all stakeholders (developers, sponsors, users) can maintain a consistent pace indefinitely, avoiding burnout and ensuring long-term project viability.
- Continuous Attention to Technical Excellence: Agile encourages regular focus on improving the quality and design of the code, which in turn enhances agility. This might involve refactoring code to improve its structure without changing its behavior.
- Simplicity: Agile emphasizes maximizing the amount of work not done or simplifying the work to focus on what’s truly necessary. This could involve breaking down a complex project into smaller, more manageable pieces that deliver value.
- Self-Organizing Teams: Agile believes that the best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams. This could look like a team deciding internally how to best tackle a project, rather than being directed by external managers.
- Reflecting and Adjusting: Agile teams regularly reflect on how to become more effective, then tune and adjust their behavior accordingly. This might involve a retrospective meeting at the end of each sprint to discuss what went well and what could be improved.
These principles form the foundation of Agile methodologies, guiding teams towards more adaptive, flexible, and customer-focused development processes.