What is Agile software development?

The term Agile first appeared in 2001 in the Agile Manifesto. Agile prioritizes short iterations, early delivery, continuous integration, and fast responses to market changes and customers feedback. Since that time, Agile has become incredibly popular and is used by companies such as Google, Electronic Arts, Salesforce and Amazon.

Nevertheless, with time many Agile projects started to feel as formal and conservative as the approaches they overthrew, while at the same time many of the most progressive development teams started to practice something new and innately more interesting than Agile.

So how did Agile come to dominance and is it now more dogma than direction? Inspired by Andy Budd, in this infographic we ponder the post-agile age, which drives upon the best elements of agile, waterfall and lean development.

What is pre-Agile software development?

Waterfall was invented by manufacturing companies as a sequential step-by-step process of software development, similar to the hardware-production model. Each change would be separately estimated, and therefore the budgets would dramatically increase.

What is Agile software development?

That’s when the Agile came in place as a response to the necessity of fast adaptation and flexibility. It favoured just-in-time planning, conversations over documentation, and running code; effectively trying to counter all the things that went wrong within waterfall approach. But over time, Agile has became decidedly less agile as dogmas crept in.

Are we entering a post-Agile world?

Andy Budd suggests we are moving towards a post-Agile world, a world that is informed by the spirit of Agile, but has much more flexibility and nuance built in. It draws upon the best elements of Agile, Design Thinking and even Waterfall.

People working in a post-Agile way don’t care which canon an idea comes from, as long as it works. Post-Agile is less of a philosophy and more of a toolkit that has been built up over years of practice.

Thanks Andy for providing the content for this piece.

Let us know what you think, what kind of process you use and what works for you!