The Illusive Definition of Agile

What is agile?  How would you define it?  Is it a set of practices?  Is it a way of management? We often say agile is a culture and a mindset.

To me Agile is not something you do, but something you are. If you don’t subscribe to the Agile values and principles and only follow the Agile practices, then you are certainly going to miss the point of Agile and the benefits it can bring to software development. Agile is not a destination, but a journey.  Teams can always get better at what they are doing to deliver overwhelming business value to clients.  Mike Cohn has some nice quotes:

• Agile is not something you become, it’s something you become more of
• Agile is not an end-state
• Paraphrasing: ‘Success’ with agile should mean that we are better off than we would have been without it [continuing waterfall ways]

Jim Highsmith has a great post on this topic.