What is Agile?

This short cartoon answers the question "What Is Agile?" and will give you the background to understand the Agile principles and values and how they can help you and your team work together more efficiently. If you'd like a free book on this topic, please see below...

I've published a book called "Starting Agile" that is designed to help you start your team's Agile journey outright. You can buy a copy from Amazon, but I'm giving free copies away to my subscribers from YouTube. You can signup for a copy at the link above.

You can subscribe to my channel with this link:

If you'd like to connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter you can find me at the link below. Just send me a message saying hello and that you found me from one of my videos:

[ShortyNE]

This is great but I have to say I found it better watching when setting playback speed to x1.25!

[steveger]

Originally, Agile was an idea for small software development teams to self-organize in such a way that they are more in touch with their customers, determine more accurately what the customers actually need, and deliver it in small increments that leave room for redesign and even complete direction changes. By now, it has mostly degraded into a fad and a buzzword that keeps consultants fed, and is perverted by scores of unimaginative middle managers as another tool to enforce micromanagement, bureaucratic conformity, general averageness, and keeping employees exchangeable and disenfranchised from any meaningful design decisions. If you go on a job interview and they tell you they are agile, you should ask some questions. Is the whole company agile, or will it be just you who has to be agile, picking up on a daily basis whatever management fancies to throw at you? Is there a "project owner"? Who is he, an actual customer or someone from your own corporate hierarchy, in a position to effectively "override" Agile? Are there project leads? How does their role relate to Agile? Are technical decisions made after in depth discussion, or per ordre de mufti? Is there any freedom to pick tasks, or is there a strict order of what you have to work on? Are you given time to develop expertise in any area, or just picking up scraps on a daily basis? Do you do sprints? How long are they? Why are they as long as they are? If they are two weeks long, is there a release to the customer every two weeks? Or do you just sprint for two weeks because management thinks that's a nice pace to keep everybody busy? Is the team always sprinting? Or only when particular goals have to be met? Is there a phase between sprints? How long is it? How does the team deal with technical debt? And so on. If they start to cringe or evade any of these questions - think again before taking the job.

[csduryea]

Agile Principles per Mark
1. Highest Priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for customer's competitive advantage.
3. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
4. Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
7. Working software is the primary measure of progress.
8. Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
10. Simplicity - the art of maximizing the amount of work not done - is essential.
11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, the tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

[AlienAndrew]

Learned this in my software engineering class and found that I already used these principles. It's just about being flexible and finding the easiest way to do something for your given team. When it comes to building projects I might start out in one framework but end up in another; depending on how the team functions and their qualifying skills.

[yilingtsai]

It's awesome to emphasize that agile is a set of value and principles. Too many people focus on the specific process or tools, and lead the organization less agile than before.

[alexandrtcacenco]

Probably best explanation of Agile. Now I know I don't need agile.

[gainonten]

there should be a mix of Agile and a mix of Real Life (contracts, budgets etc). It so easy to fall into the "less planning, more change" or "less problem solving and more delivery", until you have to rewrite code, or your project profit turns negative, or your customer misses the investors meeting with a fully scalable app. Software development in real life is a project and companies need to plan and deliver in order to survive.

[cukcan]

"agile" is a word I've been seeing on job ads very often lately. now finally I know what does it mean. Thanks

[happynikki]

As a non-English speakers, Thank you for the subs

[pfwong]

When I was studying Agile, my instructor pointed our class to this video, and I found it to be a really helpful introduction and overview of a new topic to me. It looks like this channel is a great place to start for people wanting to learn Agile!

[atuldumbre]

Hey Mark ... I just came across agile few days ago ...And was looking for simple explanation of what it could I came across lot of technical blogs and videos and got more confused. This video is the best of all. It is very simple and very effective. I understand making this video must have been difficult.All the animation and making it simple ... Thanks a lot for your helping hand in my agile learning process.

[HungNguyen-sixe]

As we are adapting Agile, your lessons is a guidance for all of us to follow. Thank you so much Mark, I am so lucky to find your videos. It gives our team a foundation to do thing right from start. Best of wishes to all that you do and truly grateful to find you.

[vijayyogimath]

This is spot on. I've been part of teams following agile for years, and this video depicts what agile is, on the ground level.

[lewis]

Great explanation. I have to say I can see why devs complain about it.
1) There is no harm in building out only what is needed as long as it does not create more work down the road. Difference between a band-aid and a MVP. If you implement a crappy db layer in the example provided, that may later have to be removed and then transitioned to something more robust, you are not saving time.
2) I question the necessity of daily face to face meetings about everything, but I understand due to the personality and nature of the way a lot of devs like to work, it's better to have unnecessary meetings than to not have necessary ones.

[stsr]

Agile is another management wrapper for all the decisions developers and IT professionals make(often in real-time) to produce a product. In my experience end users do not have a clue what they want, how technology can help them, how to make things better or how to achieve it. They constantly move the goal posts (mid-project) and ignore integration and future needs. There is always a mismatch between what is possible and what is required. You have to think of it as like asking a child what they really want for Xmas - ultimately the adult (the IT developer) has to impose some sanity on the situation.

Short-cutting final requirements to satisfy a short-term need to show the customer something is literally insane. Allowing management to specify projects in vague non-technical terms (devoid of content) will always ensure that they take the credit for zero input and this will be reflected in their salary and not yours.

Agile says "Make me a starship with warp capability"

Developer (the guy doing the actual work) says "How do I invent a warp engine".

Utter piffle which allows managers (life's bullshitters) to prosper at the expense of people who actually know how to do it.

[arjsub]

Nice video - "Agile is a set of beliefs (values & principles) on how to make decisions ...."

[PixelOutlaw]

Agile is a panacea sold to managers as a cure for their lack of technical insight into the actual skills and tools of the people underneath them. It promises a fix for the current trend of hiring and swapping management into different roles rather than promoting those who are somewhat skilled in the areas their subordinates. Agile...It's better than whatever you're currently using and we'd like to sell you certification (TM).

You can draw all the loops colored boxes and arrows you like. But in the end, a manager must tailor their own process by knowing the work of those underneath them.

[julianocamargo]

In 10:00 I fully agree but as you know scrum us all or nothing, and loves its rituals. And when it does not work, hire a consultant. I hope they get one like you that still can see clearly. Lovely video.

[lambardpolash]

"Thank you " is not enough . Very well explained, I genuinely thank you from my heart for sharing your knowledge Mr. Mark.

[RamPMonyPers]

As a non-techie, what I really liked most about 'Agile' and kept me hooked till the end of the video was the inherent flexibility. Come to think of it, I don't need to be a part of the IT industry to adopt/implement Agile. Seems to be a great way to boost productivity.