What are the 12 principles of agile?
Agile was designed to revolutionize the software development process and help eliminate outdated practices that often resulted in the slow, cumbersome implementation of software solutions and products.
Agile is based on 4 key values and 12 key principles. While the agile values provide project managers and developers with a very general overview of what it means to be ‘agile,’ and help guide the agile process, the 12 agile principles give concrete examples of how agile should be implemented.
Keep in mind that while the following principles sometimes refer explicitly to the software industry for which agile was developed, they’re still applicable to projects in other industries.
To learn more, make sure to see other lessons in agile.
1. Early and continuous delivery of valuable software
“Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.”
When developing a product, speed and precision is key. Should development take too long, there’s an increasing risk that the final product will no longer satisfy rapidly changing market demands and consumer needs.
Traditional methods may often develop a product in a vacuum, following a strict development plan with no deviation which results in delivering a final product that is already obsolete.
Agile aims to deliver a functioning product in the very first development iteration. It will be a long way from being finished; but it just has to give the customer enough of an idea so that developers can receive valuable feedback. In doing so, agile projects can tailor the product as it is being developed to deliver something that satisfies customers’ needs.
Agile takes large tasks and breaks them up into smaller, more manageable chunks. The interactive nature of agile not only improves project development but also service delivery.
2. Embrace change
“Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.”
Project development is becoming increasingly unpredictable. Markets are becoming more complex and the number of diverse products available to consumers grows every day. It’s nearly impossible to predict what the final requirements of a project will be and as such, development projects are an increasingly risky.
Most businesses don’t like risk, but what is even less desirable is wasting time and resources developing a product that’s no longer relevant by the time it’s finally completed. By welcoming change and actively seeking to make improvements through consumer feedback, businesses can gain a competitive edge - their products will satisfy the immediate needs of consumers and their products will be guaranteed to provide business value.
People change, times change, markets change. Trying to fight it is pointless. Traditional project management usually sees change as a problem to be solved, but agile embraces change and uses it to the customer’s advantage.
3. Frequent delivery
“Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.”
This principle may closely mirror the first, but while the first states that products should be delivered early, this principle goes a little more into detail as to why products should be delivered continuously.
Smaller, more frequent releases mean less chance of error. Frequent releases give consumers more opportunity to provide feedback which, in turn, aids developers in correcting errors that might otherwise have derailed a project. If developers only receive feedback every few months, any errors made early in development may have since become much more difficult and costly to fix.
Many businesses apply this principle so that they deliver new iterations of software or products every few days. This just goes to show the importance of frequent delivery, which is arguably one of the most defining agile principles.
