What is Agile? And why is it a great methodology to use for project management?

by Lenka Davis

Terminology and History

A lot has been written about the agile methodology and not just about how to use it, but also expansions to the original methodology, derivatives of it and how to adapt it to other complex projects. This article is written for those that are new to using Agile for marketing, project management or software applications, and for those who have used it for years but may be interested in learning more.

Agile, very short history

The adjective agile means to think or move quickly.

In the 1990s the term Agile was adapted to describe iterative and incremental software development. Based on the Manifesto for Agile Software Development that was written by a team of 17 software developers and published in 2001, the Agile methodology has been adopted by many processes and projects outside of software development. Since then many organizations have been formed to promote the concepts of agile (Agile Alliance, scrum.org), more specific methodologies have been written (Scrum, Kanban) and companies have been formed to help us all use it easily (Trello, Atalassian) to name a few, see a list at the end of this article. To simply describe it, Agile project management is a project philosophy or framework that takes an iterative approach towards the completion of a project.

“Agile project management is a project philosophy or framework that takes an iterative approach towards the completion of a project.”

— Northwestern University Blog

Waterfall, a traditional history

Traditionally, project management uses the waterfall method which consists of managing the project with a full and complete plan before work begins. That finished plan is then handed over to the teams that are responsible for building or executing the requirements. All of this is done in a linear fashion, with one step finished by a team before the next is started, one task falling into the next, thus the name waterfall. This approach worked well for manufacturing and construction projects, however, proved to be difficult when needing to develop and release software.

The Agile method

As the Information Age brought with it the opportunity for businesses to develop software using the Agile method for almost everything they needed, project managers began to adopt the same agility principles into their projects. The Agile method is based on a set of four values and a set of 12 principles, but first let’s look at the major benefits. They are:

• It works for complex projects because it breaks them down into smaller parts

• It allows you to get started sooner, because the plan for the project does not need to be completed before work can begin on the project. You can do just in time planning. Start with a goal or a high level plan and an initial set of features. 

• Flexible teams will be able to react quickly to changing requirements. Teams meet regularly with team members having visibility to each part of the project. This enables them to react and revise quickly as communications are open and transparent. 

• The product gets to the end user or customer quicker, because parts of the project are released in smaller increments. Different project deliverables or features are released when they are ready. 

• The team gets feedback from that customer, as these parts of the project are used by the customer and any improvements can be rolled into future releases. Integrating customer feedback increases customer loyalty.

The Agile software development values, which can be applied to project management and marketing, are:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

• Working software over comprehensive documentation

• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

• Responding to change over following a plan

The Manifesto for Agile Software Development is based on twelve principles. These principles range from customer satisfaction all the way to delivering a working product. It also focuses on people self organizing, trusting each other, and communicating regularly and often. Even though there are references to software the principles apply to many processes. Just replace software with the product or deliverable you are building.

Principles behind the Agile Manifesto

We follow these principles:
Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer
through early and continuous delivery
of valuable software.

Welcome changing requirements, even late in
development. Agile processes harness change for
the customer's competitive advantage.

Deliver working software frequently, from a
couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a
preference to the shorter timescale.

Business people and developers must work
together daily throughout the project.

Build projects around motivated individuals.
Give them the environment and support they need,
and trust them to get the job done.

The most efficient and effective method of
conveying information to and within a development
team is face-to-face conversation.

Working software is the primary measure of progress.

Agile processes promote sustainable development.
The sponsors, developers, and users should be able
to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

Continuous attention to technical excellence
and good design enhances agility.

Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount
of work not done--is essential.

The best architectures, requirements, and designs
emerge from self-organizing teams.

At regular intervals, the team reflects on how
to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts
its behavior accordingly.

How To

How to get up and running using Agile project management

• Get the team to agree that you will be using the Agile methodology to run projects

• Educate the team on the Agile methodology

• Set up your Agile process

Get the team to agree to use Agile

Your team may be struggling with focusing on what they should be working on, or on organization or just have not set up processes to execute your projects easily. If you are looking to adopt a new process share the benefits of using an agile methodology with your team. Agile will bring organization, prioritization, along with transparency, flexibility and the ability to deliver your project more quickly. Try doing one project with your team as a pilot to test out the process.

Educate the team on Agile

There is a plethora of information, training and certifications available online. Note that there are many derivatives of the agile methodology as different business sectors adopt it to their specific needs. If you are doing software development you can use The Scrum Guide and certify members of your team to be certified Scrum Masters and Product Owners at scrum.org. If you are looking for agile project management you can watch Agile Basics videos here. provided by The Agile Alliance. And if your marketing team wants to do Agile Marketing then you can find organizations such as AgileSherpas that will help you get there or you can adopt the process on your own by using software such as Monday.com or Trello.com, just to name a few.

Set up your Agile process

What you need to have for a successful start to set up your first Agile project is

• defined roles

• an agreement on which key meetings you will use

• a list of tasks listed in a backlog

• a decision on how many and how long your phases will be

• a small or pilot project

So, for example, if your project is to launch an app that takes notes for you while you are on a work or school video call, you will want to decide on each of the four parts listed in the table above. 

What role will each team member have? You will identify your product owner. This is the person who will be the subject matter expert on the technologies related to your app and understands the customers and marketplace. The project manager leads the team so they continue to work well together, communicate well, and remove any obstacles. The rest of the team will fill in needed roles such as programmers, designers, testers and other responsibilities based on the expertise you need to build your app.

You will want to have planning meetings to develop a strategy and a general plan of how this app will work. Once you begin building you will have regular meetings to check in on progress. During the project you will have short daily meetings since developer team members will have topics to discuss that need to be decided upon that can hold up the whole schedule.

Based on the team’s plan, the product owner will decide what parts of the app will be built first and then decide the priorities of the next set of features. The feature list will be kept in a product backlog and as the team decides what features to be built next, each item in the product backlog will be moved into the next group or phase to be built.

When the team is planning the project they decide how many sprints or iterations they think they will need, and how long each phase will take, normally a phase would be between 2 to 4 weeks long. Before each phase is started the team decides what they can build in the next phase.

Agile is lightweight, simple to understand and difficult to master (as stated in the The scrum guide link). Once your organization embraces Agile, however they will see how powerful it is. There are well known articles written in Harvard Business Review one of which states that “Over the past 25 to 30 years they [Agile methods] have greatly increased success rates in software development, improved quality and speed to market, and boosted the motivation and productivity of IT teams.” It has generated 40%, 50% or 60% more of customer inquiries for marketing, product introductions for IT and recruits for human resource departments. Imagine what it could do for your team?

Fun Fact

In 1986 the “The New New Product Development Game”  article was published in HBR (Harvard Business Review). It partially inspired one of the 17 people (Jeff Sutherland) to help develop the scrum methodology, a derivative of Agile. The HBR article was co-authored by another of the 17 people (Hirotaka Takeuchi). These 17 people then met in February 2001, at The Lodge at Snowbird ski resort in the Wasatch mountains of Utah to talk about programming and what emerged was the Agile Manifesto!

Organizations that promote Agile

AgileAlliance
Scrum.org
ScrumAlliance
CollabNet

Companies that make software for Agile

Atlassian
Atlassian Jira Software
Monday.com
Trello
Asana

Articles on Agile

Embracing Agile in Harvard Business Review
The New New Product Development Game in Harvard Business Review
Agile vs Waterfall vs Kanban vs Scrum: What's The Difference? by LucidChart
Agile Marketing: A step-by-step guide by McKinsey & Company
Scrum, What's in a Name on DZone.com
Agile for Startups on Medium.com