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• What is Agile methodology? (A beginner’ ...

What is Agile methodology? (A beginner’s guide)

Agile methodology is a project management framework that breaks projects down into several dynamic phases, commonly known as sprints. In this article, get a high-level overview of Agile project management, plus a few common frameworks to choose the right one for your team.

Scrum, Kanban, waterfall, Agile. 

Agile project management isn’t just useful for software project management—all types of teams have been successful with this dynamic methodology. If you’re looking to get started with Agile, you’ve come to the right place.

What is the Agile methodology?

Agile methodology is a project management framework that breaks projects down into several dynamic phases, commonly known as sprints. 

The Agile framework is an iterative methodology . After every sprint, teams reflect and look back to see if there was anything that could be improved so they can adjust their strategy for the next sprint.

What is the Agile Manifesto?

The Agile Manifesto is a document that focuses on four values and 12 principles for Agile software development. It was published in February 2001 by 17 software developers who needed an alternative to the more linear product development process .  

What are the 4 pillars of Agile?

As outlined in the Agile Manifesto, there are four main values of Agile project management:

Individuals over processes and tools: Agile teams value team collaboration and teamwork over working independently and doing things "by the book.”

Working software over comprehensive documentation: The software that Agile teams develop should work. Additional work, like documentation, is not as important as developing good software.

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation: Customers are extremely important within the Agile methodology. Agile teams allow customers to guide where the software should go. Therefore, customer collaboration is more important than the finer details of contract negotiation.

Responding to change over following a plan: One of the major benefits of Agile project management is that it allows teams to be flexible. This framework allows for teams to quickly shift strategies and workflows without derailing an entire project.

What are the 12 Agile principles?

The four values of Agile are the pillars of Agile methodology. From those values, the team developed 12 principles. 

If the four values of Agile are the weight-bearing pillars of a house, then these 12 principles are the rooms you can build within that house. These principles can be easily adapted to fit the needs of your team. 

The 12 principles used in Agile methodology are:

Satisfy customers through early, continuous improvement and delivery. When customers receive new updates regularly, they're more likely to see the changes they want within the product. This leads to happier, more satisfied customers—and more recurring revenue.

Welcome changing requirements, even late in the project. The Agile framework is all about adaptability. In iterative processes like Agile, being inflexible causes more harm than good. 

Deliver value frequently. Similar to principle #1, delivering value to your customers or stakeholders frequently makes it less likely for them to churn. 

Break the silos of your projects. Collaboration is key in the Agile framework. The goal is for people to break out of their own individual projects and collaborate together more frequently . 

Build projects around motivated individuals. Agile works best when teams are committed and actively working to achieve a goal. 

The most effective way to communicate is face-to-face. If you’re working on a distributed team, spend time communicating in ways that involve face-to-face communication like Zoom calls. 

Working software is the primary measure of progress. The most important thing that teams should strive for with the Agile framework is the product. The goal here is to prioritize functional software over everything else.

Maintain a sustainable working pace. Some aspects of Agile can be fast-paced, but it shouldn't be so fast that team members burn out . The goal is to maintain sustainability throughout the project.

Continuous excellence enhances agility . If the team develops excellent code in one sprint, they can continue to build off of it the next. Continually creating great work allows teams to move faster in the future. 

Simplicity is essential. Sometimes the simplest solution is the best solution. Agile aims to not overcomplicate things and find simple answers to complex problems. 

Self-organizing teams generate the most value. Similar to principle #5, proactive teams become valuable assets to the company as they strive to deliver value.

Regularly reflect and adjust your way of work to boost effectiveness . Retrospective meetings are a common Agile practice. It's a dedicated time for teams to look back and reflect on their performance and adapt their behaviors for the future.

What are the benefits of the Agile development methodology?

You commonly find Agile project management used in application development or other types of software development. This is because software is constantly changing, and the needs of the product have to change with it. 

Because of this, linear project management methods like the waterfall model are less effective. Here are a few other reasons why teams use Agile:

Agile methods are adaptable

There's a reason why they call it the Agile methodology. One of the main benefits of using Agile processes in software development is the ability to shift strategies quickly, without disrupting the flow of a project. 

Because phases in the traditional waterfall method flow into one another, shifting strategies is challenging and can disrupt the rest of the project roadmap . Since software development is a much more adaptable field, project managing rapid changes in the traditional sense can be challenging. This is part of the reason why Agile project management is favored in software development.

Agile fosters collaborative teamwork

One of the Agile principles states that the most effective way to communicate with your team is face-to-face. Combine this with the principle that encourages teams to break project silos and you have a recipe for collaborative teamwork. 

While technology has changed since Agile’s inception and work has shifted to welcome more remote-friendly policies, the idea of working face-to-face still hasn't changed.

Agile methods focus on customer needs

One of the unique aspects of software development is that teams can focus on customer needs much more closely than other industries. With the rise of cloud-based software, teams can get feedback from their actual customers quickly. 

Since customer satisfaction is a key driver for software development, it’s easy to see why it was included in the Agile process. By collaborating with customers, Agile teams can prioritize features that focus on customer needs. When those needs change, teams can take an Agile approach and shift to a different project. 

Agile methodologies

The Agile framework is an umbrella for several different variations. Here are a few of the most common Agile methodologies. 

Kanban is a visual approach to Agile. Teams use online Kanban board tools to represent where certain tasks are in the development process. Tasks are represented by cards on a board, and stages are represented in columns. As team members work on tasks, they move cards from the backlog column to the column that represents the stage the task is in.

This method is a good way for teams to identify roadblocks and to visualize the amount of work that’s getting done. 

Scrum is a common Agile methodology for small teams and also involves sprints. The team is led by a Scrum master whose main job is to clear all obstacles for others executing the day-to-day work. 

Scrum teams meet daily to discuss active tasks, roadblocks, and anything else that may affect the development team.  

Sprint planning: This event kicks off the sprint. Sprint planning outlines what can be delivered in a sprint (and how).

Sprint retrospective : This recurring meeting acts as a sprint review—to iterate on learnings from a previous sprint that will improve and streamline the next one. 

Extreme Programming (XP)

Typically used in software development, Extreme Programming (XP) is an Agile framework that outlines values that will allow your team to work together more effectively.  

The five values of XP include:

Communication

Similar to daily Scrum standups, there are regular releases and iterations, yet XP is much more technical in its approach. If your dev team needs to quickly release and respond to customer requests, XP focuses on the “how” it will get done. 

Adaptive Project Framework (APF)

The Adaptive Project Framework, also known as Adaptive Project Management (APM) grew from the idea that unknown factors can show up at any time during a project. This technique is mainly used for IT projects where more traditional project management techniques don’t apply.

This framework is based on the idea that project resources can change at any time. For example, budgets can change, timelines can shift, or team members working on the project may transition to different teams. APF focuses on the resources that a project has, as opposed to the resources a project needs. 

Extreme Project Management (XPM)

This type of project management is often used for very complex projects with a high level of uncertainty. This approach involves constantly adapting processes until they lead to the desired result. This type of project involves many spontaneous changes and it’s normal for teams to switch strategies from one week to the next. 

XPM requires a lot of flexibility. This is one of the reasons why each sprint is short—only a few weeks maximum. This methodology allows for frequent changes, trial-and-error approaches to problems, and many iterations of self-correction.

Adaptive Software Development (ASD)

This Agile methodology enables teams to quickly adapt to changing requirements. The main focus of this process is continuous adaptation. The phases of this project type —speculate, collaborate, and learn—allow for continuous learning as the project progresses. 

It’s not uncommon for teams running ASD to be in all three phases of ASD at once. Because of its non-linear structure, it’s common for the phases to overlap. Because of the fluidity of this type of management, there’s a higher likelihood that the constant repetition of the three phases helps team members identify and solve problems much quicker than standard project management methods.

Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)

The Dynamic Systems Development Method is an Agile method that focuses on a full project lifecycle. Because of this, DSDM has a more rigorous structure and foundation, unlike other Agile methods. 

There are four main phases of DSDM:

Feasibility and business study

Functional mode or prototype iteration

Design and build iteration

Implementation

Feature Driven Development (FDD)

Feature Driven Development blends different Agile best practices. While still an iterative method of project management, this model focuses more on the exact features of a software that the team is working to develop. Feature-driven development relies heavily on customer input, as the features the team prioritizes are the features that the customers need. 

This model also allows teams to update projects frequently. If there is an error, it's quick to cycle through and implement a fix as the phases of this framework are constantly moving. 

Organize Agile processes with Asana

You’ll often hear software development teams refer to the Agile process—but any team can run Agile. If you’re looking for a more flexible project management framework, try Agile. 

Related resources

Waterfall, Agile, Kanban, and Scrum: What’s the difference?

What is technical debt and how to pay it off (with examples)

6 ways to develop adaptability in the workplace and embrace change

Burndown chart: What it is and how to use it (with example)

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How to Create an Agile Project Plan: A Step-by-Step Approach

April 26, 2024

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After hours of development, you finally deliver the product to your client. You’re confident all the hard work will pay off, and the client will be delighted.

But there’s a plot twist! The client returns with a lot of critical feedback. The product didn’t hit the right chords. And now, you have to start from scratch. 

Sounds like a nightmare for project managers and development teams, doesn’t it? 

One way you can avoid mishaps like this is by planning projects the agile way. 

Agile project planning is an iterative approach to project management that focuses on delivering frequent and incremental value. It promotes cross-functional collaboration and encourages ongoing improvement based on stakeholder feedback. 

Unlike traditional project planning methods (the Waterfall Method, for example) that emphasize having a strict plan and timeline, agile project planning prioritizes flexibility and adaptability. 

While the former method is more suited for long-term, less complicated projects that demand a rigorous structure, agile planning works best for short-term and complex development projects that require frequent stakeholder feedback. 

In this article, we’ll cover the essentials of agile project planning to help you get the most out of it.

The Benefits of Agile Project Planning 

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With user needs shifting constantly and development projects getting more complex, switching to agile can make your dev cycles more efficient. Here are some of the benefits of agile project planning: 

• Improved usability: Incorporating feedback from users and other stakeholders ensures the software meets their need
• Incremental delivery: Agile projects are broken down into smaller, manageable increments, prioritizing the delivery of the most valuable features early in the project lifecycle for faster feedback loops  
• Continuous improvement: Agile teams regularly reflect on their processes and seek opportunities to improve efficiency, quality, and effectiveness over time 
• Adaptability: Agile offers ample room for flexibility. It encourages adapting the project plan based on changing requirements, priorities, and market conditions 

Agile Planning Methodologies 

Let’s discuss the three most popular agile planning methodologies in project management.

Scrum is an agile software development framework designed to deliver value iteratively and incrementally.  

This subset of agile emphasizes adopting a flexible, holistic product development strategy where the dev team works as a unit to reach a common goal.

Key elements of Scrum project management include:

• Sprints : Short, time-boxed work cycles where the team focuses on completing a set of deliverables from the product backlog. These cycles typically last 1-4 weeks and keep the project focused and adaptable
• Daily stand-up meetings : Also known as daily scrums, these are brief meetings (usually 15-20 minutes) held each day during a sprint. The team uses this time to discuss progress, identify roadblocks, and ensure everyone is aligned.
• Product backlog : This is a prioritized list of features, requirements, and fixes for the entire project. It’s a living document that evolves throughout the project as new information emerges
• Sprint backlog : A subset of the product backlog, it includes the specific list of items the development team will work on during a particular sprint. This list is created during sprint planning and reflects what the team believes they can accomplish in that timeframe
• Sprint review meetings : Held at the end of each sprint, the review meeting is an opportunity for the team to showcase what they’ve completed and gather feedback from stakeholders
• Sprint retrospectives : Another meeting held at the conclusion of a sprint, the retrospective is a chance for the team to reflect on what went well, what didn’t, and how they can improve their process for the next sprint

This is a visual framework used in agile planning and software development. Kanban focuses on continuous delivery and encourages teams to limit work in progress (WIP) to reduce waste and optimize flow.

Kanban boards help visualize workflow, with columns representing different stages of the process. For instance, a simple, three-column Kanban board categorizes tasks under a project into ‘To-do,’ ‘In-progress,’ and ‘Done.’ 

Kanban boards also offer flexibility in managing tasks and provide visibility into the status of action items.

Lean software development (LSD) is an agile methodology inspired by lean manufacturing principles. 

Also known as the minimum viable product (MVP) approach, LSD focuses on optimizing production and minimizing waste. 

It reduces unnecessary steps in the development process, prioritizes focusing on essential features, and encourages team collaboration. 

Using this method in agile planning process helps cut costs and allows quick responses to evolving customer needs and market trends.

Here are the four main principles that determine the direction of projects in agile planning: 

1. Iterative and incremental planning

In agile planning, a project is simply broken down into small, manageable iterations or increments. 

Instead of planning the entire project upfront, teams focus on preparing for the next iteration based on feedback and insights gained from previous iterations.

2. Agile planning based on user stories

User stories are short, simple descriptions of a feature or functionality from an end-user’s perspective.

They read as follows:

As a [Who], I want to [What], So that [Why]

• As a [Who] : This identifies the user or persona who will benefit from the functionality
• I want to [What] : This describes the specific goal or action the user wants to accomplish
• So that [Why] : This explains the benefit or value the user will receive by achieving the goal

Here’s an example of a user story written in the typical Scrum format:

As a fitness instructor, I want to be able to create and manage workout routines for my clients online so that I can provide them with personalized exercise plans and easily track their progress.

Agile planning revolves around creating and prioritizing user stories based on their value to the customer. These user stories serve as building blocks for planning and executing work during iterations, ensuring the end product meets customer expectations and preferences.

3. Division of agile project plan into releases and sprints

Agile projects are generally organized into releases and sprints.

Releases represent larger milestones or deliverables that contain a collection of features or functionalities. On the other hand, Sprints are short, time-boxed iterations (usually one to four weeks) during which teams work on a subset of user stories or tasks. 

This division allows teams to deliver value incrementally, each contributing to the overall project goals.

4. The role of agile in strategic management

What’s strategic management? It is the process of managing an organization’s resources to meet its goals and objectives. 

Agile principles and practices allow businesses to respond quickly to market changes, innovate, incorporate customer feedback, reduce time to market (TTM), and improve project success rates, which lead to more effective strategic management. 

How to Create an Agile Project Plan

Agile planning is all about flexibility. You can adapt the processes to fit your project’s unique needs but ensure the team stays aligned with the main objectives.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating an agile plan that drives your project toward success: 

Start your agile project plan by creating a user story in the format we highlighted above, that is,

“As a [persona], I [want to], [so that].”

For example, if your team is building an e-commerce website, you can have a user story that goes like this: 

“As a shopper, I want to be able to add items to my shopping cart so I can review and purchase them later.”

Once your user story is ready, it’s time to: 

• Define the project’s goals 
• Set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure progress
• Devise a strategy to fulfill the user story 
• Identify the key products or solutions in a product backlog

The next step is creating a product roadmap.

In agile, a product roadmap refers to a plan of action that helps you achieve your vision. It outlines how a product or solution will evolve throughout the project, along with its key features.

This roadmap offers a high-level overview of the project, keeping team members aligned and guiding them in the right direction. 

Now that you have the strategy and a tentative roadmap to reach your goals, the next step is to plan incremental releases. 

In agile project planning, release refers to the delivery of the product after multiple iterations. 

During this stage, the agile team has to identify the scope and requirements of the releases and estimate the time needed. Be flexible with the deadline—set a target to complete a release by a certain quarter to proceed with a ballpark timeline in mind. 

During this step, the agile team has to plan the deliverables for each release.

Break down the deliverables into small actionable tasks based on user stories. These tasks will help the team work on new features and update old ones based on the evolving requirements of the end user. 

In Agile Scrum , this step is known as sprint planning . You create a sprint backlog by picking specific items from the product backlog. 

During weeks one to four of the sprint, the Scrum team works on the action items of a sprint backlog. Once the sprint starts, you cannot add or remove tasks from the sprint backlog. 

Arrange daily standups or daily scrum with your agile team to facilitate continuous collaboration and improvement. 

Hold a sprint review at the end of each sprint to showcase the work the team has completed so far and ask for feedback from the stakeholders. 

Sprint retrospective is another important agile ceremony. Use it to analyze what worked well during the sprint, which areas need development, and how the team can improve in the upcoming sprints. 

Managing all these steps becomes seamless with ClickUp’s Agile Project Management tool .

From creating product roadmaps, planning sprints, and tracking progress to maintaining collaboration, this platform keeps all the moving pieces under one roof and improves the efficiency of the development process.

Let’s see how you can make the most of this platform for planning your agile project: 

• Speed up the development process with ClickUp Brain . Use AI to generate product roadmaps, test plans, technical specifications, and more in an instant 
• Set project goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) with the ClickUp Goals feature and get automated reports on project progress 

• Keep stakeholders in the loop with ClickUp Chat View , assign tasks, and collaborate by tagging team members in comments

• Stay on top of agile capacity planning with ClickUp’s Workload view feature . Assess your team’s workload capacity and time estimates and plan sprints accordingly 

• Check how far you’ve come with the project and how much work is left with Burnup and Burndown charts respectively 

• Monitor sprints based on task status, use color-coding to get a quick overview of progress, and identify bottlenecks before they become a threat with a Cumulative Flow chart 

• Visualize agile workflows and sprints the way you want. Easily sort them by status, due date, priority, and more with Board view

Whether you follow Scrum, Kanban, Lean Software Development, or any other agile methodology, ClickUp’s Project Management platform empowers you to manage all projects within a unified platform. 

No more juggling between multiple apps—ClickUp supports 1000+ integrations with popular tools such as GitLab, GitHub, Figma, Slack, and many more.

The tool helps maintain the agile principles, enhances productivity, and enables development teams to shift focus to their core task, i.e., developing stellar products. 

Agile Project Planning Templates 

Agile project planning can feel overwhelming if you’re starting from ground zero—but not when you have a ready-to-use framework for guidance! 

ClickUp’s free and fully customizable agile templates can make planning and organizing projects less stressful. 

Here are some templates to check out: 

Too many projects on your plate? ClickUp’s Project Planner Template can help you find calm amidst the chaos.

Use this agile project plan template to visualize the progress of your ongoing projects through Kanban boards, allocate resources correctly, and keep stakeholders aligned.

You can track project progress with custom statuses such as Completed, In Progress, On Hold, and To Do. Custom attributes such as Risk, Remaining Budget, Duration, and Work Progress allow you to quickly scan project data. 

The template also offers six custom view options (Project Activities, Schedule, and Budget Tracker, to name a few) to keep you updated on each project’s whereabouts. 

If you manage a non-development team and want to implement agile methodologies into your system, ClickUp’s Agile Project Management Template would be a good starting point.

Use the Form to populate the backlog with tasks and prioritize them, carry out tasks with the Board or Sprints, and schedule regular check-ins (such as sprint reviews or retrospectives) to make improvements on the go. 

Complex software development projects require a standardized system to track progress, optimize sprints, and ensure faster delivery. You can establish this system with ClickUp’s Agile Scrum Management Template .   

From identifying backlogs, sprint planning, daily standups, and sprint review to retrospectives—the template helps you take care of every step. 

Custom statuses, fields, and views ensure visibility into project progress and establish clear communication among product, engineering, and QA teams. Use the template to closely monitor your workflow, address bottlenecks early on, and improve overall efficiency and performance. 

Want to deliver top-tier results within short deadlines? Focus on effective sprint planning with ClickUp’s Agile Sprint Planning Template . 

It helps you get a detailed overview of tasks in the project backlog, keeps all stakeholders on the same page, and offers seamless progress tracking across different stages of the sprint lifecycle. 

Use custom statuses, fields, and views to tailor the framework to your requirements. Features such as time tracking, tags, dependency warnings, and emails make your job as a project manager easier, keeping your agile team more productive and organized. 

Another plus point? These project management templates are helpful for new agile practitioners and experts looking to be more efficient with project planning. 

Overcoming Hurdles in Agile Planning 

As a project manager, you must be aware of the challenges that may hit you out of the blue during agile planning. They could come in any of the following forms:

Scope creep

In agile methodology, stakeholders offer input throughout the project, and the requirements keep changing with each sprint. Such evolving project requirements often expand the work scope beyond what was initially decided.

Time crunch

One of Agile’s main priorities is collaboration. However, when the team of engineers constantly stays in the loop with testers and clients, it can take away a lot of time from their daily schedule. 

Unfit for certain projects

While agile planning works best for software development projects, it may not be suitable for projects that cannot accommodate incremental changes. For instance, agile won’t work for construction projects, as continuous feedback from multiple stakeholders can do more harm than good.

Despite challenges, project managers can maintain an amicable relationship with stakeholders, customers, users, or sponsors and negotiate like pros. Let’s see how:

• Active listening: Patiently listen to your stakeholders’ needs and concerns during the project and initiate changes accordingly, but be sure to avoid scope creep 
• Transparency: Build trust and reduce uncertainties by keeping stakeholders informed about progress, challenges, and decisions 
• Collaborative decision-making: Involve stakeholders in all major or minor decision-making processes to ensure their buy-in and better alignment 
• Conflict resolution: If any miscommunication or conflict arises between the team members and the stakeholders, address it promptly and constructively and find a mutually beneficial solution 

When you implement agile planning methodologies for project management, you can readily and efficiently accommodate changing user needs and client feedback and adapt your processes. 

You don’t have to predict the outcome—agile gives you the flexibility to figure it out as you proceed with the iterations. 

As a result, you can create high-quality products that add value to the customer’s life without worrying about wasted effort and resources. 

Ready to get started? Sign up to ClickUp and manage projects the agile way!

1. How do you create an agile plan?

To create an agile plan, start by defining clear objectives. Break them into manageable tasks, estimate effort for each task, prioritize them, and then iteratively execute and adapt based on feedback.

2. What is included in an agile project plan?

An agile project plan includes project goals, product roadmap, product backlog, sprint backlog, daily standups, release planning, and progress tracking.

3. How do you structure an agile project?

Structure an agile project by defining clear objectives, creating a product backlog, breaking it into sprint backlogs, assigning tasks to team members, conducting regular sprint meetings, iterating through sprints, and adapting based on feedback.

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Agile planning: a step-by-step guide

Overwhelmingly, the world is going agile. Companies that adopt Agile methodologies see a range of benefits, from higher rates of customer satisfaction, stronger employee engagement, and primarily smoother operations. Agile teams benefit significantly from these methodologies, resulting in enhanced collaboration and productivity.

Still, despite all the positives related to Agile planning, many businesses haven’t adopted the practice. Whether out of hesitance for change or a desire to keep things status quo, companies who aren’t using an Agile approach, and Agile planning risk falling behind the competition.

In this blog post, we’re going to dive into what the approach is and the steps you can take to apply it to your own workflows, especially for software development projects.

What is agile planning?

Agile planning is a part of the Agile methodology, which is a project management style with an incremental, iterative approach. Instead of using an in-depth plan from the start of the project—which is typically product-related—Agile leaves room for requirement changes throughout and relies on constant feedback from end users. Agile teams utilize these principles to stay adaptable and responsive.

With Agile planning, a project is broken down into smaller, more manageable tasks with the ultimate goal of having a defined image of a project’s vision. Agile planning involves looking at different aspects of a project’s tasks and how they’ll be achieved, for example:

• Roadmaps to guide a product’s release ad schedule
• Sprints to work on one specific group of tasks at a time
• A feedback plan to allow teams to stay flexible and easily adapt to change
• User stories , or the tasks in a project, capture user requirements from the end user’s perspective

Essentially, with Agile planning, a team would decide on a set of user stories to action at any given time, using them as a guide to implement new features or functionalities in a tool. Looking at tasks as user stories is a helpful way to imagine how a customer may use a feature and helps teams prioritize work and focus on delivering value first.

Essential characteristics of Agile planning

A whopping 71% of organizations have adopted agile planning methodologies, and 60% of those companies increased their profits after doing so. However, implementing Agile methodologies is important and can dictate the success of this new project management format in your company. Before implementing any project planning method, whether it’s Kanban boards, Gantt charts, or Scrum, it’s important to understand the basics. Here are four essential characteristics of Agile you should be aware of.

An agile project plan is divided into releases and sprints

Agile planners define a release as creating a new product or substantially updating an existing product. Each release is broken down into several iterations called sprints. Each sprint has a fixed length, typically two weeks, and the team has a predefined list of items, or user stories, to work through in each sprint.

Task creation and planning is based on user stories

As mentioned above, a user story is a task that caters to an end-user’s needs. For example, when working on a software product, teams may work on features based on user stories, such as:

• “As a team member, it’s helpful for me to receive a notification telling me which new tasks are assigned to me.”
• “As a team leader, I need to receive an email when a task is stuck or behind schedule so I can keep my project on track.”

Unlike other project management methodologies, like waterfall , in which teams would create detailed technical specifications of exactly what they would build, with Agile planning, teams focus on documenting what users need. Throughout the sprint, team members figure out how to address specific user needs in the most efficient way possible.

For a more in-depth comparison, read our Agile vs Waterfall guide.

Planning is iterative and incremental

All sprints are of equal length, and an Agile team repeats the same process over and over again, like Scrum ceremonies , in every sprint. The result of each sprint should be working features that can be rolled out to end-users.

An iterative process allows the team to learn what they are capable of, estimate how many user stories they can action and finish in a given timeframe, and discover problems that impede their progress. Then, newly discovered problems can be addressed in subsequent sprints.

Work estimation is a collective effort

A focal point of Agile planning is that development teams should participate in planning and estimation, instead of solely management deciding on the work scope. In the sprint stage, Agile planning allows teams to determine the complexity of user stories to carry out a plan, called a story point .

For example, a team can assign 1 point to a simple user story, 2-3 points for a moderately complex one, and 4-5 points for a bigger story based on their understanding of the work involved. Then, user stories that aren’t actioned or assigned points on the current sprint are put into the project backlog.

The 6 levels of Agile planning

Agile planning is a multi-level process, with each stage representing a different part of the planning process. Often, people refer to the Agile planning process as an Agile planning onion for its different layers, each one giving way to the next. When looking at Agile planning like an onion, we start with the outer layer first and slowly get closer to the core, going from less frequent on the outside to more frequent stages as we move in.

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Let’s take a closer look at each layer of the onion, what it entails, and when it’s used.

• Strategy: This is a high-level approach to planning, often done at the beginning of a project when organizations define their long-term vision and identify resources and capabilities to reach strategic objectives
• Portfolio: In this stage, the focus is on managing a portfolio of projects or products, including prioritization, resource allocation, and alignment with business objective, ensuring that resources are applied effectively
• Product: In the product planning stages , teams define overall product strategy , decide on a development approach, and set dates, themes, timelines, and prioritize features to meet project goals and respond to market needs
• Release: Release planning breaks down the product roadmap into specific releases, focusing on which user stories to prioritize, each story’s timeline, team capacities, and the features or functionality to be delivered in each release
• Iteration: Iteration planning, also known as Sprint planning , defines the work to be done in a short iteration or sprint, usually spanning 1-4 weeks and involves breaking down user stories into tasks and estimating the effort required
• Daily: In the final layer, agile practices include the daily stand-up or scrum meeting to plan daily tasks and discuss progress and impediments, helping keep the team aligned and focused on the immediate tasks at hand

Agile planning process: Step-by-step

Agile project planning involves multiple steps. Each step is meant to propel your project forward while maintaining an organized approach to managing your product and workforce. The steps can be adapted to your team’s specific needs, and some need to be maintained on an ongoing basis, but overall, following the steps below will help you successfully implement an Agile plan for your next product launch.

1. Define vision

Your first step in Agile planning is to start by defining the vision for your project or product, which includes overall goals and objectives to be achieved. The product owner is often crucial in this early stage, ensuring that the vision aligns with user needs and business goals.

2. Set clear expectations on goals

Next, you should set clear expectations on what you want the output to be so that all team members and stakeholders are on the same page. Even if tasks or certain plans change due to feedback cycles and new iterations, the expectation should remain constant.

3. Define and break down the product roadmap

After setting expectations, it’s important to build a high-level product roadmap to highlight milestones and deliverables, giving your project more of a strategic direction. Then, the roadmap should be broken down into releases or increments, each with a defined set of features to include. Cross-functional teams often collaborate at this stage to ensure all perspectives are considered.

4. Create tasks based on user stories

This step should be more ongoing as project and user needs evolve over different iterations, but the idea is to create actionable tasks based on real user stories so that team members can work on adding new features, updating existing ones, or creating more functionality in your product.

5. Populate product backlog

Your product backlog is a collection of tasks and user stories that should be worked on over a project’s lifecycle. It includes tasks that aren’t a part of the current sprint but may be a part of future ones and can operate as a place to collect new tasks that arise as a result of feedback, roadblocks, or problems that need to be solved. Tasks in the product backlog should also be prioritized according to user needs or a project’s timeline.

6. Plan iterations and estimate effort

For each release, it’s important to plan a series of iterations or sprints. In this process, you want to define each iteration’s goals and objectives while also estimating the effort and time it may take based on the current sprint’s tasks. This helps gauge a sprint’s complexity so you can create an interaction plan based on current workfloads, deliverables, and timelines.

7. Conduct daily stand-ups

Daily meetings, often called stand-ups , are a helpful Agile ceremony that allows teams to discuss any pressing issues and plan the day’s work. Daily stand-ups are short and focused and involve very short-term planning to tackle a task currently being worked on.

8. Monitor and adapt

Finally, with Agile planning, it’s always important to monitor progress against overall goals, iteration plans, and your product roadmap. Track any deviations from the plan so you can find immediate solutions. At the end of each sprint, you can identify areas for improvement and implement them in future iterations.

These eight steps involve a lot of scheduling, planning, and communicating to implement effectively. To keep this process organized and running smoothly, many teams use a platform like monday dev, which is built on the monday.com Work Operating System (Work OS). Platforms like monday dev help teams run their projects, communicate between themselves, and track all updates in real-time.

Implementing monday dev for effortless Agile planning

Agile planning’s structure and iterative approach to work make it the perfect complement to development teams, though any team can use this method. Once you have an understanding of how to use and maintain this methodology, take your Agile planning to the next level on monday dev . Not only will you always have a clear view of each sprint, but you’ll also be able to reinforce Agile principles such as transparency and agility every step of the way. Here’s a closer look at some monday dev features that are ideal for the Agile planning process.

Agile templates

monday dev makes it easy to start quickly with ready-to-go templates for Agile planning. Whether it’s an Agile Project Management template or a Sprint Management template , you can set up your project instantly and customize the template to fit your needs within the agile framework.

Automations to seamlessly implement Agile planning steps

Automations in monday dev help Agile projects flow more seamlessly by putting manual tasks on autopilot. Build your own custom automation formulas to trigger reminders, notifications, communications, or other actions to ensure tasks are kept on time and nothing falls through the cracks.

Advanced reporting and insights for stronger iterations

Agile planning is all about making adjustments to improve the flow of your project, and with monday dev’s advanced reporting capabilities, you can make sure you have all the insights you need to make informed decisions. From burndown charts to performance insights and everything in between, monday dev helps you stay consistently on top of your work.

Planning for better Agile projects

The more planning that goes into a project and all its tasks, the more likely the project is to go smoothly. Hiccups can always happen, but when a project is planned according to Agile practices, roadblocks are easier to manage. Agile planning is made even easier by using an intuitive platform like monday dev so that your entire team are aligned while staying on top of their individual tasks and working collaboratively towards the same goal.

What is the Agile method of project planning?

The Agile method of project planning is a flexible, iterative approach involving different planning stages, focused on delivering value to customers through ongoing improvements and iterations.

What is the difference between strategic planning and Agile planning?

Strategic planning focuses on long-term goals and objectives, while Agile planning is more focused on short-term, iterative planning with the purpose of achieving an overall goal in a changing environment.

What is the difference between Agile and sprint planning?

Agile planning focuses on breaking down work into small, manageable tasks and prioritizing them based on effort and value, while sprint planning is a specific type of Agile planning that occurs at the start of each new sprint where teams decide on the work that will be done.

• Agile methodology

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What Is Agile Planning? 

Agile planning is an iterative approach to managing projects avoiding the traditional concept of detailed project planning with a fixed date and scope. Based on the principles rooted in the Agile Manifesto, Agile project planning emphasizes frequent value delivery, constant end-user feedback, cross-functional collaboration, and continuous improvement.

Unlike traditional project planning, Agile planning remains flexible and adaptable to changes that may emerge at any project lifecycle stage. 

Why Is Agile Planning Important? 

Agile planning is crucial because it offers a flexible approach to project management that focuses on adaptability, meeting customer needs, and continuous improvement. Agile teams utilize regular feedback loops to share knowledge and align project goals with customer requirements, resulting in 59% of Agile adopters reporting increased satisfaction due to enhanced collaboration.

Medium and large organizations often measure success by predictability, while smaller companies focus on the value delivered. This trend underscores the importance of evaluating ideas based on their impact on business goals and return on investment.

Agile planning allows for real-time adjustments and work prioritization based on new information, promoting frequent delivery of small work increments and early risk mitigation. Recent data shows that 33% of organizations have adopted Agile planning tools for large-scale projects in the last three to five years, highlighting a significant shift towards Agile methods.

Agile Project Planning vs. Traditional Project Planning

In the past, business leaders spent considerable time crafting detailed long-term plans. This approach worked well until the late 20th century, when dynamic markets required more frequent changes, and a flexible planning method became necessary.

With the rise of knowledge work, Agile project planning emerged as a critical approach. Unlike traditional (Waterfall) planning, which is linear and rigid, Agile planning is iterative and adaptive to change.

Both methods have their merits. Traditional planning is ideal for projects like construction, where detailed, step-by-step plans are crucial, and changes can be costly. In contrast, Agile planning is suited for knowledge work, allowing for adjustments at any stage to meet customer needs. Agile focuses on short-term detailed planning, enabling easy modifications as needed.

Agile Planning Is NOT Scrum Planning

You will often read that Agile planning is the same as Scrum planning. However, this is far from the truth. Scrum is a prescriptive framework for software development that proposes one concrete way to plan. It is prevalent in the software world, but it is often the subject of severe criticism.

The 6 Levels of Agile Planning

The "Agile Planning Onion" is a great way to visualize the various levels of planning in an Agile project lifecycle. Let's explore each level from a product development perspective.

• Strategy : The outermost layer represents the organization's strategic vision and goals. Senior leadership defines how these objectives will be achieved.
• Portfolio : Here, senior managers plan the portfolio of products and services that will support the strategic vision set at the strategy level.
• Product : Teams create a high-level plan and break it down into key deliverables, focusing on features and functionalities that align with the strategic objectives.
• Release : At this level, key features are scheduled to be delivered within a specific time frame, usually about a month.
• Iteration : This level manages work over a few weeks. Teams select tasks or user stories from the backlog to deliver in small, manageable batches.
• Daily : Daily planning meetings allow teams to discuss their tasks, progress, and any roadblocks. They create an action plan for the next steps in project execution.

Agile planning is crucial at every level of the onion. It's not just for day-to-day team activities (Daily, Iteration, Release); it also applies to product management, portfolio management, and strategic planning . Being agile in your strategy defines true business agility .

Agile planning is iterative, meaning you continuously develop and adjust your plan as needed. The goal is to invest time in planning at the optimal moment and to adapt easily to changes during execution.

Key Characteristics of Agile Planning

Irrespective of the level at which you operate, your Agile project plan will have similar characteristics. Let’s explore them in no particular order.

The Goal from the Eyes of a Customer (Value)

An Agile plan must focus on delivering exactly what the customer wants, which is defined as value. The plan should clearly outline how and when this value will be delivered. Outcome-focused planning is crucial. Instead of detailing activities, prioritize the value produced. It's more important to measure results than to track individual tasks.

Lack of Detail Whenever It Can Be Avoided (Commit as Late as Possible)

Agile planning embraces flexibility by avoiding excessive detail early on, like preparing for an unexplored mountain expedition where you estimate food and water needs but cannot pinpoint exact camping spots. Many knowledge work projects share this uncertainty. While managers often demand strict, detailed plans, it's more practical to delay commitments until the last responsible moment, allowing for adjustments based on new information and circumstances.

Frequent Deliveries and Fast Feedback Loops (Small Batch Size)

Agile planning emphasizes frequent deliveries and explicit feedback collection, integrating feedback into subsequent plan iterations to enhance project success. While projects are inherently large, delivering them in smaller batches allows for early customer previews and alignment with expectations.

Suppose the project team misunderstood the requirements and set off to work on something completely different from what you envisioned as a customer. Would you rather give them feedback early on or wait until the project deadline? It is more than natural to have frequent feedback loops early in the cycle and prevent wasting precious time and resources.

Date Ranges instead of Single Date Estimates (Probabilistic vs. Deterministic)

Instead of providing a fixed date for project completion, offer a date range. Many customers appreciate this approach, as it is more realistic. Using historical data and forecasting methods to create date ranges in Agile planning allows for more accurate timelines, aligning better with the principle that it's better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.

Focus on the Work and Not the Worker (Team Is the Owner)

In Agile planning, focus on the flow of work rather than individual worker utilization. Assigning work too early can lead to inefficiencies. Instead, allow self-organizing teams to manage projects, even if it means some team members are underutilized at times.

Address dependencies realistically rather than trying to eliminate them entirely. Manage dependencies with a holistic view of your organization and value streams. If a team's progress blocks customer value, prioritize resolving that issue over keeping another team busy. This approach requires a shift in thinking but is essential for effective Lean and Agile project planning, emphasizing issue resolution over worker utilization.

No Separate Phase for Quality Assurance (Build Quality in)

In Agile planning, quality should be incorporated throughout the execution phase rather than in the final quality assurance phase. This approach, inspired by Toyota's principle of "Build quality in," ensures that quality is maintained consistently, avoiding issues at the end. A final quality check should be an exception, not the norm, as it indicates neglect of quality during the project.

Two-Tiered Plans (Plan Only the Initiatives and Not the Work Items)

An effective Agile plan focuses on high-level deliverables (initiatives) and allows teams to break these down into tasks . Unlike traditional Gantt charts, Agile plans do not assign start and end dates to individual tasks unless necessary.

This approach lets teams pull new work when they have the capacity, following the pull system principle from Toyota. Setting dates for initiatives but not for their subtasks keeps planning flexible and empowers teams to make optimal decisions based on their technical expertise.

Data-Driven Decisions (Use Historical Data to Plan the Future)

Using historical data, Agile planning employs statistical methods like Monte Carlo simulations for forecasting. These simulations use past throughput and cycle time data to predict project outcomes, providing probabilities for completion dates or work delivery.

For example, they might forecast an 85% chance of project completion by July 2nd or a 95% chance of delivering 200 tasks by the deadline. This method, integrated with tools for continuous forecasting, offers real-time project status updates, reducing the need for detailed task-by-task estimation.

Continuous Forecasting

Agile project management tools integrate continuous forecasting with two-tiered plans to provide managers with real-time updates on project status and deliverables. Businessmap's software extends this capability to the portfolio level, allowing for real-time forecasts of all projects in the portfolio . To achieve this, simply run daily tasks on a set of team boards and connect them to the parent projects.

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Agile Project Plan Example

As we’ve already discussed Agile planning characteristics, let’s look at a practical example of building an Agile plan and how we do it at Businessmap.

Defining Major Project Deliverables or Releases

Let’s say we have to plan the creation of a new website. As the scope for that is quite big, the first thing that we would do is define different functional parts (deliverables) that will be continuously released to the market.

Here, we should note that we won’t plan the deliverables in detail. An Agile project plan leaves this for the "last responsible moment" and includes it progressively throughout the project. This will save us the otherwise wasted time of unnecessary planning and help us retain agility for any emerging changes.

Breaking Down Deliverables into Tasks

Once we have the major functional parts of the project visualized in a roadmap-like view, our next step would be to break them down into individual work items. As we progressively elaborate on our Agile plans, we will start with the most critical deliverables at this point.

You can use a dedicated work board to visualize the tasks and their flow to completion. In our platform, we connect the Agile timeline containing the project roadmap and the kanban board .

This gives an unmatched view of the entire project's progress from concept to fruition. As a result, we can see which deliverables are currently in progress, their status, and who is working on what at any given moment. This setup also allows us to collaborate with one another when tasks get stuck in the process and resolve issues faster.

Through the concept of " just in time " planning, we can retain agility for any last-minute changes, emerging requirements, or shifting priorities. This allows us to satisfy customer needs better when delivering our projects.

Businessmap is the most flexible software platform

for outcome-driven enterprise agility.

Agile planning is a new, flexible way of organizing future projects and adjusting to changing requirements without generating waste. These are the most important characteristics of a good Agile plan:

• A goal from the eyes of a customer
• Lack of detail whenever it can be avoided
• Frequent deliveries
• Date ranges instead of single date estimates
• Focus on the work and not the worker
• No separate phases for Quality Assurance
• Two-tiered plans
• Data-driven

Nikolay Tsonev

Product Marketing | PMI Agile | SAFe Agilist certified

Nick is passionate about product marketing and business development and is a subject matter expert at Businessmap. With expertise in OKRs, strategy execution, Agile, and Kanban, he continues to drive his interest in continuous improvement. Nick is a PMI Agile and SAFe Agilist certified practitioner.

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Agile Planning: Step-by-Step Guide for Agile Projects and Sprints

Agile Project Management Definition

What is planning in agile, scrum approach in agile project planning, agile project planning steps, agile sprint planning steps, agile planning: why you need it.

Many companies implement Agile methodologies in their projects, seeking to increase overall productivity. Eventually, Agile-based projects are more successful than traditional ones: while the success rate of Agile projects is 42%, for traditional Waterfall projects, this rate is about 14% .

In this article, we’ll uncover the definition of Agile, the planning steps, the differences with Scrum planning, and some templates and software to use while planning your Agile projects.

Agile is a flexible approach to project management . Originally applied to the development process, nowadays, Agile is widely used by many teams and industries. Without digging into Agile principles, we can define its main idea as the ability for projects to easily adapt to changes and new requirements.

The idea of change management affects Agile-based projects throughout their whole lifecycle. It means that when you plan a project, you should leave a space for changes. So, before starting a project, take some time to learn materiels and Agile planning essentials.

First of all, let’s handle some terms.

Agile planning is a widely-used management style. In a nutshell, it implies an iterative approach, so the project is divided into several phases, called iterations. In each iteration, there are a few sprints. Sprints are barely planned up ahead before starting a project. In most cases, Agile planning means that you’re adding changes and requests from stakeholders or owners to the work, so it’s impossible to plan what’s inside each sprint and interaction before starting working on a project.

Planning in Agile is based on feedback, requests, and user stories. Basically, we can split Agile planning into two phases: project and sprint planning. These phases require different actions and consist of different steps. We’ll analyze each phase separately in the paragraphs below.

Agile has multiple planning strategies and methodologies . One of the most popular is Scrum planning. However, even Scrum can be considered as one of Agile methodologies, Agile and Scrum planning are a bit different.

Scrum is very similar to the Agile planning approach, but there are some concept differences between them. In simple words, Agile is a framework with core ideas and principles, while Scrm is just one of multiple methodologies to follow the Agile planning process.

In some paragraphs above, we mentioned sprints. Sprint is a common practice in Scrum. It helps to avoid in-depth planning when starting a project, so you can quickly adapt to new requirements and changes before starting a new sprint. The core planning tool in Scrum is a backlog. The backlog is the place where all requests, user stories, and other possible features are stored. Tasks in the backlog can be prioritized, divided into different categories, and literally segmented by any parameters. It helps to plan one sprint once the previous is finished. If some tasks are not completed within a sprint, they’re taken to the backlog, and they’ll be marked as the top priority in the next sprint.

In general, the Scrum approach to project planning outlines the following principles:

• Plan not an overall project, but each sprint.
• Start planning a new sprint only when the previous one is finished right away.
• Review your results after each sprint.
• Handle the retrospective meetings after a sprint or two to review the results of the whole team.

To learn how Scrum planning differs from Agile, let’s go to the main steps of the Agile planning process.

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Each project has its own schedule. Traditional Waterfall projects have strict steps and deadlines, but that’s not an option for flexible Agile projects. However, Agile projects have their own scheduling, and each step requires planning. But wait, this planning is not the same as in traditional projects, mostly because you don’t need to plan everything before the project starts.

Step 1. Form clear expectations for the final delivery of a project

Before starting a project, you must have a clear understanding of the final output. In Agile-based projects, the result depends on requests from stakeholders, users (or clients), and owners. Even if their needs are changing, you can plan actions iteratively to apply changes.

Step 2. Define the details and scope of work

You can’t say exactly when you’ll finish the task unless you know its details and the factors that can influence the ETA. Understanding how much work needs to be done is one of the steps of proper Agile planning.

Step 3. Form tasks based on user stories

User stories are problems that need to be solved. In most cases, stories are complex and need to be broken down into smaller tasks. Sometimes, it’s difficult to form an exact task, and you need to complete multiple activities to solve a problem instead. Such a sequence of tasks is epic and it can last more than one sprint.

Step 4. Populate the backlog

Once user stories are split into tasks and epics, it’s time to populate the backlog. Create tasks with clear titles and descriptions, so each teammate can understand what to do. When all tasks and epics are in the backlog, set priorities, assign responsible people, and estimate the effort of each task in story points.

Step 5. Plan sprints

Typically, each sprint is equal to the iteration. Sprints also have strict timelines, for example, two or three weeks. You simply can’t put all your tasks into one sprint, that’s exactly why you need backlog planning and priorities. Tasks that have a higher priority take to the sprint first, then come older ones.

Step 6. Make up documentation

In documentation, explain the main principles and rules of a project. It helps both teams and stakeholders understand the focus of a project and request only possible changes. Documentation can change from time to time as well, but as a whole, it needs to be clear and meaningful from the beginning.

We figured out what Agile planning is, and now it’s time to dive into sprint planning. You might think that it's a completely different topic, but in fact, sprint planning is a part of an overall Agile planning. Here are steps that Agile teams follow to plan a new sprint:

Step 1. Schedule a retrospective meeting

Once a sprint is completed, it’s time for a retrospective. Retrospective is a regular team meeting where all teammates discuss tasks, difficulties, and issues that happened during the sprint. Such meetings help to prevent future mistakes and understand which tasks need to be taken to the upcoming sprint.

Step 2. Discuss user stories

After each sprint, you’ll probably be receiving requests and reports from users, stakeholders, and owners. As we mentioned earlier, there are user stories. Discuss all recent user stories with teammates to decide if they need to be taken to the next sprint or if maybe they’re worth working on in the latest development stages.

Step 3. Split stories and epics into smaller tasks

Sometimes it happens that you can’t cover the user story or a task during one sprint, so it becomes an epic. Split complex activities into smaller tasks and assign them to your teammates. But it’s also important to consider who was responsible for the original complex task. Maybe it is worth assigning this person as a responsible follower to this task?

Step 4. Analyze your efforts

Analytics is an important part of planning. Before planning a new sprint, analyze the time taken to complete previous tasks, their estimates in story points , and the number of teammates who participated. It will help you to wisely manage both human and time resources while planning upcoming activities.

Step 5. Tools for Agile Planning and Project Management

There are many different tools for Agile team management . Starting with a simple whiteboard and sticky notes in the 90's, Agile tools made huge progress. Now, you don’t need to physically have everything around you, and you don’t even need to work with your teammates in one office.

Here are some basic Agile planning tools to use in Flowlu:

As it was stated before, backlog is a place where you create tasks, set priorities, and analyze if the task is worth taking to the sprint. In Flowlu, you have a backlog for each of your projects. It prevents a project from being messy and uncategorized.

• Interactive Board

All teams and companies have different requirements, so it’s important to have the possibility to set custom stages, manage tasks’ cards and visualize the whole workflow. In Flowlu, you can manage your projects with a handy Kanban board. On the board, you can filter tasks by sprints, assignees, priorities, etc..

• Burndown Chart

The burndown chart is a widely used tool among Agile teams. This chart allows you to see how fast your team is closing tasks. In comparison to traditional charts, burndown charts show positive results if they go down because they reflect the number of tasks that need to be done.

• Gantt Chart

The Gantt chart was taken from traditional project management methodologies. However, in Flowlu, you can see it as a part of the Agile module as well. It helps to understand how much time was taken to complete each sprint or epic.

• Retrospective Template

Retrospective is a must-have for all Agile teams, but barely any managers know how to run such meetings. If you don’t have any ideas what to ask your team, Flowlu’s retrospective template builder will help you plan questions and the whole meeting.

Planning your project according to the Agile method can help you easily adapt to changes and implement new ideas or technologies into your workflow. Why is it worth it? Simply put, it keeps all your teammates engaged and provides transparency to all processes, so you can understand the reason for difficulties and quickly handle them.

Agile project planning is an iterative approach to project management that focuses on delivering working software in short cycles.

• Flexibility:  Agile projects are more flexible than traditional projects because they can be changed as needed to meet the needs of the customer.
• Speed:  Agile projects can deliver working software to the customer more quickly than traditional projects because they are broken down into smaller, more manageable chunks.
• Quality:  Agile projects typically produce higher-quality software than traditional projects because they involve continuous feedback from the customer.
• Customer satisfaction:  Agile projects are more likely to satisfy customers because they involve close collaboration with the customer throughout the development process.
• Getting buy-in from stakeholders:  It can be difficult to get buy-in from stakeholders for Agile projects because they require a different way of thinking about project management.
• Managing scope creep:  It can be difficult to manage scope creep in Agile projects because the requirements are constantly evolving.
• Keeping the team focused:  It can be difficult to keep the team focused on a specific set of tasks during a sprint, especially if there are distractions or interruptions.
• Measuring progress:  It can be difficult to measure progress in Agile projects because the requirements are constantly changing.
• Set clear and concise goals
• Prioritize the work
• Break down the work into small tasks
• Estimate the effort required for each task
• Communicate regularly

• Contact sales

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What Is Agile Project Planning? An Introduction for Beginners

While agile is relatively new, it has made a big splash in the work of project management. It started in software development, but has since been adopted by other industries that have seen the benefit of agile’s iterative approach.

Those that use an agile project management framework don’t like to consider it a methodology, though some argue it is. Agile is more of an approach, and could almost be defined as a philosophy. Today we’re going to sidestep the philosophical, though, and instead focus on agile planning in project management, and specifically, creating an agile project plan.

What Is Agile Project Management?

The agile methodology is an iterative, adaptive approach to managing a project that has an emphasis on rapid change and flexibility. The reason for this flexibility is to deliver value to the customer faster. A team practicing agile works incrementally, continuously evaluates the requirements and results, and responds quickly to any changes that come up.

Agile also focuses on collaboration and keeping lines of communication open. There must be trust among the agile team, and an embrace of change. There is still a person who prioritizes tasks (usually known as the product owner ), but the agile team themselves determine how to do the project planning and get the work done. Yes—agile has self-organizing teams that direct their own work!

This approach goes back to the development of the Agile Manifesto, which was written by seventeen software developers who found consensus around twelve principles. The length of interactions, or the size of teams, isn’t defined. It’s more about adhering to the stated values, which you can execute with scrum, hybrid methodology and more.

What Is Agile Planning?

However you choose to implement the agile principles, there is one thing all approaches have in common: an agile plan. Agile work takes place during short periods of time that are called agile sprints . A sprint is usually between one and three weeks, and the team uses this time to complete deliverables.

There are certain characteristics of agile planning that deserve mention to get a full idea of what the agile planning process entails:

• First, there is the release. This is the product that an agile team works on.
• The release plan is broken down into sprints, with each sprint dictating a specific set of tasks to be completed.
• These tasks are called user stories.
• You then build a plan from these user stories, which describe the needs of the end-user.
• Then, the team works together to figure out the best way to address these user stories.

The sprint is the building block of agile planning. Agile sprints to be the same length in duration and are repeated, ending with a working feature that can be rolled out to the end-user. Due to the iterative nature of a sprint, a team will, over time, be able to better estimate how long user stories will take.

Software like ProjectManager makes executing sprints easy. Identify work that needs to be done in your backlog, prioritize it, then execute that work as a team on our kanban board. Balance resources with workload tools, and track progress with dashboards so you deliver your best work every time. Try ProjectManager today for free.

Why Planning Still Matters in the Agile Methodology

Agile planning gives an agile team a clear picture of the goals of their project. This supports the collaborative nature of agile, because everyone is on the same page. Agile plans are not obsolete and anachronistic, they define the work and help the team make decisions based on facts.

Project plans are an organization technique, and agile requires organization—albeit, much less than a project planned in waterfall. This might be why some are quick to dismiss planning when working in an agile project management framework. But that’s throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Agile planning is based on sprints and user stories, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore the big picture.

How to Make an Agile Project Plan

A team develops an agile project plan as the product owner describes the goals for the release, which are typically to improve the end-user experience and resolve problems. Once this has been defined, the next step is to get the team together and discuss desired features.

Related: Agile Sprint Planning Template

This leads to another discussion about the details for each of those features, and what might impact their delivery. The team also identifies any risk that might negatively impact the project, as well as task dependencies. The features that are riskiest and have the most value to the end-user are usually completed first.

Step-By-Step Guide to Creating an Agile Project Plan

Now you’re ready to create a plan:

• Begin with a retrospective meeting. A retrospective meeting is where you discuss the previous sprint to learn from what went right and what went wrong.
• Run a sprint planning meeting. A sprint planning meeting looks at the release and any updates that have occurred, such as changes to priority, new features, etc.
• Create user stories: Detail the user stories as much as possible so that they are well-defined.
• Create deliverables: Break the user story down into tasks that are usually not more than a day in duration.
• Delegate responsibility: Assign tasks to team members and assign ownership to make sure they’re committed to executing them.
• Create a workflow: Put the tasks on a board, either a card on a physical board or with project management software tools, such as kanban boards.
• Track progress: Use the board to track the progress of the sprint as the tasks move from one stage of the production cycle to the next.
• Use a burndown chart: Create a burndown chart to show the number of tasks or hours left.

Related: Agile vs Waterfall and the Rise of Hybrid Projects

Agile Project Planning Terms

Here are some important agile concepts that you’ll need to know to create and execute your agile project plan:

• Product Backlog: In agile project management, a product backlog is a list of deliverables that derive from the product roadmap and its requirements. Things like new product features, bug fixes or any changes are backlog items that should be documented here.
• Product owner: The product owner is the member of the agile team who’s responsible for defining user stories and prioritizing the product backlog.
• User stories: It’s a small task within an agile plan. They’re called user stories because they’re product features described from the end-user perspective.
• Burndown chart: A burndown chart is used to show the amount of work that has been completed in an agile sprint and the number of tasks or hours left.
• Burn rate: In agile project management, the burn rate is a metric used to measure the efficiency of an agile team. It measures the relationship between the completion of user stories and the time spent on them.
• Team velocity: The velocity is the broader performance metric that measures the amount of work a team can get done during a sprint.
• Story point estimation: This is a method used to measure agile teams’ performance. A story point is a unit that is used to calculate the effort needed to complete a user story. Story points measure three factors, complexity, risk and repetition.

Now that you know the basics of agile planning, you’ll need a project management tool like ProjectManager to help you manage your agile projects.

How ProjectManager Helps With Agile Planning

To properly facilitate agile planning, you need the right tools. ProjectManager is a work management software that connects agile teams and helps them run better sprints and speed up releases.

Stay Notified on Task Changes

Connecting teams so they can collaborate on their sprints is a top priority. ProjectManager lets team members work together at the task level, giving them tools to attach files, leave comments and change task status. When a task’s status changes, a notification goes out by email as well as showing up as an in-app alert.

Create Workflows on Boards

Agile teams are self-organizing, and need a tool that gives them the autonomy to work the way they want. ProjectManager’s kanban board is designed to provide that flexibility. The board view acts as a digital organizer, with cards that move from one column to the next to represent the different stages of production.

Manage Your Resources in Real-Time

In addition, ProjectManager has resource management features, reporting tools and a real-time dashboard that provide high-level views of your sprints. Unlike other tools that make you configure the dashboard, ProjectManager’s dashboard automatically calculates data on metrics such as time, cost and more.

ProjectManager is award-winning software that organizes your backlog, helps plan your sprints and monitors your progress—perfect for agile planning. See what ProjectManager can do when making your next agile project. Try it free today.

Deliver your projects on time and on budget

Start planning your projects.

Project Management

Guide to agile planning in 2024: processes, tools and templates.

Cloudwards.net may earn a small commission from some purchases made through our site. However, any earnings do not affect how we review services. Learn more about our editorial integrity and research process .

If you’re looking to move away from the overflow of documents and strict planning guides that traditional project management methodologies require in favor of adopting a free-flowing, adaptable method that encourages communication, agile planning is for you.

Last Updated: 17 Aug'24 2024-08-17T17:47:41+00:00

All our content is written fully by humans; we do not publish AI writing. Learn more here.

• An agile approach to planning can help make teams more adaptable, flexible and accepting of change during any project stage.
• Agile planning encourages teams to communicate openly with each other, with stakeholders and with clients, which can increase the chances of project success.
• Many project management software platforms exist for those wishing to adopt agile planning approaches. Our top three picks are monday.com, ClickUp and Zoho Projects.

Facts & Expert Analysis About Agile Planning

• Scrum is king: Scrum is by far the most popular agile framework, with an estimated 61% of companies employing this framework to help deliver projects on time. 2
• Greater success: More projects planned with an agile approach are completed successfully (64%) than projects planned with the traditional waterfall method (49%). 1
• Increased revenue: According to a report from 2022, companies using agile planning techniques saw an average growth in revenue of 60%. 1

Agile project management has grown in popularity in recent years. In fact, at least 71% of U.S. companies 1 use agile planning methods to map out their projects. It should be no surprise that companies are finding success by utilizing the best project management software and adopting agile approaches.

If you want to increase project success but aren’t sure what agile is , you’re in the right place. In this guide, we’ll break down agile planning and explain the stages of the agile process. We’ll explain the difference between traditional planning and agile planning, discuss the key components of agile and cover what the agile manifesto says about planning. Let’s jump in.

Updated the article to add custom graphics.

Definition: What Is Agile Planning?

Traditional project management methodologies like waterfall use project plans that are set in stone. However, agile planning — which is generally (but not always) used for software development projects — enables project teams to formulate a plan of attack for upcoming projects while also allowing room for changes as the projects progress.

In agile project management, software development and other projects are broken down into chunks of work that lead to a product vision. Agile planning involves sitting down with stakeholders and clients at the beginning of the project, after each sprint and at the end of the project so feedback on iterations can be shared and changes can be implemented frequently.

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Methods & Techniques in Agile Planning

Below, we’ll examine several popular agile planning methods in more detail so you can better understand how each method works.

What Is PI Planning in Agile?

Project increment (PI) planning in agile relates specifically to a version of planning used in the SAFe method , which is a type of scaled agile. PI planning is similar to sprint planning in the scrum framework. In SAFe, agile release trains (a large team comprising many small scrum teams) use PI to plan large-scale sprints that last between eight and 12 weeks. 

What Is Sprint Planning in Agile?

Sprints are a key component of scrum. Sprints are time-boxed events and the sprint duration can last one to four weeks. During a sprint planning meeting, the product owner and the development team create user stories (tasks) to work on, and create definition of ready (DoR) and definition of done (DoD) strategies to ensure that the items being worked on are in the best shape possible.

What Is Capacity Planning in Agile?

Capacity planning is a popular method that many agile teams use. Thanks to the reports that many of the best agile tools provide, project managers, scrum masters and product owners can see how much work their team has been able to finish (known as team velocity) in time-boxed events.

During planning meetings, tasks are assigned values like story points to determine which resources are required to finish the job. An agile team can also use various agile estimation techniques , like planning poker or t-shirt sizing, to estimate the effort required to complete a task.

Capacity planning leads to well-planned sprints and time-boxed events. You can read our capacity planning vs resource planning guide to see how the two compare.

What Is Adaptive Planning in Agile?

Project leaders who embrace adaptive planning can quickly change the team’s direction to meet new requirements and goals that stakeholders and clients set and request. Adaptive planning is flexible, welcomes feedback and is the backbone of agile methodologies and frameworks.

What Are the Stages in the Agile Planning Process?

The stages of agile projects can vary depending on the framework and technique you use to lead your team. Below, we’ll examine the popular agile planning onion technique.

Agile Planning Onion

The agile planning onion is a project visualization tool that can help project managers navigate through six planning stages: strategy, portfolio, product, release, iteration and daily. Each layer of the onion relates to a portion of agile planning. 

When using the agile onion, you start with the outer layer and work your way in. The outer layers represent items or tasks that occur less frequently, while the inner layers represent more frequent processes. Below, we’ll look at the stages in more detail.

The onion’s outer layer represents the overall strategy that agile project managers want to use and the project’s goals. During this stage, senior leaders, stakeholders and clients create a project charter (project scope) that defines the vision. Project resources and ways to reach project objectives are also discussed.

During the portfolio part of the onion process, project leaders manage their portfolio of projects and discuss prioritization, resource allocation and how the project visions align with business objectives. Project roadmaps are also developed.

When teams reach the product layer, the senior leaders decide on which software development approach to use, and timelines, due dates and themes are set. Feature priorities are also finalized.

Teams hold release planning discussions to decide how many sprints or time-boxed events there will be, determine which product features (user stories) will be included in each sprint and set team velocities (capacities). 

The fifth layer, iteration (sprint planning), is when the product owner and development team meet to discuss and define the definitions of ready and done, as well as the acceptance criteria. In addition, teams assign story points to each task or use other agile estimation techniques to determine how complex a user story is. Delegation poker can also be used to assign tasks.

The innermost layer, daily, represents the daily meetings during which teams discuss the project, the tasks they’re working on and any issues or successes they’re experiencing. Daily meetings are one of the most critical agile project management practices , as they help teams stay focused on the project.

Agile Planning vs Traditional Planning

Traditional project management approaches differ significantly from agile methodologies and frameworks. In traditional methodologies like waterfall or the critical path method (CPM), projects are planned down to the last detail before work begins. Teams do not deviate from the plan, and product testing is one of the final steps.

Agile methodologies easily meet the changing needs of stakeholders and clients. If the market changes or a key new feature is needed, teams can easily stop, pivot and realign themselves with new goals. Agile teams also frequently test each new iteration of the software or product they’re working on to iron out bugs and issues.

Agile Planning Tools & Software

Fortunately, the days of using sticky notes on a whiteboard are behind us. Now, many project management software platforms can help us plan, track and manage projects with ease, like these free project management software options. Below, we list five of our favorite agile project management tools to help modern teams get the job done.

• monday.com : Our favorite agile project management tool is capable of supporting all agile frameworks. monday.com is easy to use, is loaded with features and offers affordable plans. Learn more in our monday.com review .
• ClickUp : A powerful platform for agile methodology, ClickUp is unmatched when it comes to collaboration tools and has easy-to-use task management features. Find out more in our ClickUp review .
• Zoho Projects : This is the ideal platform for new project teams due to its intuitive, agile-friendly interface; integrations with other Zoho products; and powerful chat tool. Read our Zoho Projects review to learn more.
• Trello : Trello features the best kanban boards in the industry. Its drag-and-drop mechanics and customizable task cards are unmatched. Trello also supports unlimited integrations. You can learn more in our full Trello review .
• Jira : Perhaps the best tool for agile software development, Jira’s backlogs, issue trackers and boards are unmatched. Check out our Jira review for more details.

Agile Planning Template

Project management software can help you plan and execute projects, but you can find yourself in a bind if you don’t know how to get the most out of the software. Fortunately, platforms like monday.com come with numerous templates that can help you quickly get projects up and running. Below, we’ll take a look at some popular monday.com agile planning templates.

Software Development Templates

monday.com is ideal for agile project teams working on software development projects. monday.com offers many templates that can help the entire team execute a project, move through the iterative process and realize the project vision. You can find templates for sprint planning, sprint retrospectives , product roadmaps, features, releases and more.

Human Resources Templates

Many human resources teams have switched from traditional project planning to agile planning, and for good reason. monday.com knows this and supplies templates for kanban boards to help human resources professionals breeze through the recruitment process, onboard new employees and much more.

Marketing and CRM Templates

monday.com tops our list of the best project management software for CRM because of its templates. There are templates for event management, social media campaigns, content calendars, marketing activities, customer onboarding and sales. You can activate the templates with a single click and use them as they come or customize them to your liking.

Browse through the extensive list of templates. You’ll find solutions for freelancers, startups, content production, education, real estate and many more industries. If you’re a project manager, scrum master or team member who wants to get a head start when it comes to managing projects and strive for continuous improvement, templates are the way to go.

How Does the Agile Manifesto Address Planning?

The agile manifesto , created by a group of software developers who were tired of the restrictive waterfall project management method, is quite clear about how to approach planning with the agile methodology. In agile projects, you put the customer first in everything you do.

The manifesto champions the idea of welcoming changes, even late in the development process; frequently delivering functional software; using working software as the main method of measuring progress; and promoting daily collaboration among developers. It also states that teams must meet regularly to reflect on progress and adjust their behavior accordingly.

Key Components of Agile

Now that you know what agile planning is, it’s time to take a more in-depth look at some key components of the agile planning process. We list four important components that should never be overlooked.

Face-to-Face Meetings

No matter which agile framework or method you use, you should expect to participate in face-to-face meetings. The agile manifesto makes it clear that for projects to be successful, open and honest discussions between team members, stakeholders and clients should frequently take place. Communication and collaboration are the keys to any agile project plan.

Backlog Refinement

Backlog refinement is the process of updating, prioritizing and analyzing user stories and tasks to work on in upcoming sprints and time-boxed sessions. By ensuring that user stories are complete, that new client and stakeholder requests have been added, and that every development team member is in agreement, sprints and work periods run smoothly. 

Agile Tools

We’ve discussed project management software and how it can help you set project goals, but kanban and scrum boards are worth mentioning. These agile boards give leaders a global overview of a project. Easy-to-read columns that house task cards can show which part of the development process a task is in and whether team members are being over- or underutilized.

Sprints and Time-Boxed Events

A key component of agile planning is breaking down large projects into small, easily manageable periods of work that last from one to four weeks. By breaking down projects, teams can focus on high-priority tasks and managers can efficiently track team velocities. Time-boxed events allow development teams to frequently deliver working software and product iterations.

Characteristics of Agile Planning

Agile planning can greatly enhance the probability of project success. Once your team has adapted to the process, you can expect the following benefits.

• Increased collaboration: Thanks to the nature of agile, teams are encouraged to communicate openly and work together to solve problems. Increased collaboration leads to better end products.
• Higher-quality products: Teams can create higher-quality products for their clients thanks to improved collaboration and communication, better user stories and concise definitions of ready and done.
• Continuous feedback: In agile frameworks, stakeholders and clients become part of the team. This increases the amount of input they can give the team, which means the client has a greater chance of ending up with the product they envisioned.
• Continuous improvement: Teams that adopt agile approaches are more likely to continually learn thanks to frequent meetings and feedback loops.
• Improved customer focus: Frequent meetings with stakeholders and clients help the team understand exactly what the customer or stakeholders want. The customer-first approach to product development appeases clients and drives customer value.

Final Thoughts

There’s no doubt that abandoning traditional project management practices and adopting an agile approach to planning can pay off in a big way, especially in the product and software development industries. Agile frameworks allow teams to pivot quickly, factor in requests that are outside of the original project scope, collaborate efficiently and plan better.

If you want to know more about Agile, you can read our Agile Iron Triangle guide or our list of Agile interview questions.

Have you considered adopting an agile planning approach? Do any agile frameworks (scrum, kanban, XP) pique your interest more than others? Have you discovered any other benefits since switching to agile planning? Let us know in the comments, and as always, thanks for reading.

FAQ: Agile Strategic Planning

The six levels of the agile onion method for planning are strategy, portfolio, product, release, iteration and daily.

The stages of agile planning are the same as the levels of agile planning: strategy, portfolio, product, release, iteration and daily.

The agile method for project planning adopts a highly adaptable, flexible and iterative approach. After creating an initial project scope, agile frameworks allow for significant changes throughout all project stages.

Agile strategic planning borrows many elements from agile software development, such as creating product visions, embracing change, holding frequent meetings for reviews and self-reflection, and being open to continuous feedback from stakeholders and clients.

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What Is Agile? A Deep Dive Into Agile Methodology.

Agile definition.

Agile methodology is a defined framework for software development success. It helps teams adapt and solve specific needs at a given time and prioritizes accelerated time to market and the value of user insights. Agile is based upon a set of four values and twelve principles laid out in the Manifesto for Agile Software development.

Created with flexibility and adaptability in mind, Agile is a method of organizing software development and product management teams to prioritize the continuous development of products after they go to market. The Agile framework ensures that products are able to solve market issues as they arise and reduces the number of abandoned projects in any team’s portfolio.

Agile vs. Waterfall

Before the creation of the Agile methodology, it could take years to develop a product that solves a business’s key challenges and allows them to focus on continuous growth. The most common software development process of the pre-Agile era was known as Waterfall . Waterfall encourages development teams to identify problems, develop a solution, and bring a product to market in its entirety, providing the most robust experience at first interaction.

Waterfall Methodology

The Waterfall development methodology follows a clear path to reach its end product

• Project requirements and scope of work are set into place.
• Products are designed to meet requirements laid out by the scope.
• Products are built.
• Products are tested.
• Problems are discovered during testing and fixes are applied.
• Products are launched once testing is completed.

While the Waterfall approach led to more complete products hitting the market at a given time, it also introduced several downsides. The biggest issue was that Waterfall forced development teams to stick to the scope without introducing changes throughout the process. This meant that solutions would often no longer be viable as challenges shifted over time to newer, rapidly emerging problems. It was commonplace for development teams to rack up a “graveyard” of abandoned projects rather than bring outdated solutions to the marketplace.

See More Agile Stories Agile implementation won’t create great software on its own — but it can help.

Shift to Agile

As frustrations mounted across enterprises throughout the 1990s, the software industry became ripe for an update to how projects are built. The answer arrived in 2000 with the introduction of Agile methodology. 

Pioneered by a group of software developers in Utah, Agile emerged as a way to speed up development times to bring new software to market swiftly. These developers realized that reducing the time it takes for users to receive solutions to their problems would fix issues with market fit while also realizing that receiving rapid feedback from users would affirm work in progress and allow for constant improvement. Eventually, the developers were able to formalize the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, commonly referred to as the Agile Manifesto.

The creation of the Agile Manifesto brought about four central values and twelve principles that set the basis for Agile methodology

Agile Values

1. Individuals and interactions should be prioritized over processes and tools . The people who create the products are responsible for the success of that product.

2. Working software is more useful than comprehensive documentation . Ensuring products can reach the market in a timely manner is the priority.

3. Customer collaboration should be prioritized over contract negotiation . Customers are crucial to the development of quality products.

4. Responding to change is valued over following a plan . Agile work environments are all about adaptability and making the right decision for a given moment.

Advantages and Benefits of Agile

Adopting an Agile methodology offers teams many benefits , including preventing silos, allowing for quick changes and making space for reflection easier.

Lets Developers Take Ownership

One upside of Agile is the permission and ownership its structure grants to teams and individual developers. Since Agile relies on teams to self-organize and collaborate, it inherently promotes ownership of projects and deliverables. As products are continually developed, an individual may work on a specific product for months or even years after its release — granting a deeper sense of ownership and connection to a particular product for developers. 

Prevents Silos

The collaborative nature of Agile also prevents teams from being siloed off from one another. This allows projects to move faster and avoid unnecessary delays caused by passing aspects of a project from one team to the next. 

Allow for Quick Changes

Agile allows teams to pivot away from processes or products that aren’t working, granting permission to make quick changes to the product or the process as necessary. Pivoting in Agile can look like removing a card from a sprint or restructuring sprints to allow for shorter work cycles. The ability to pivot easily and change products throughout the development process helps teams create more innovative and in-demand products. 

Makes Space for Reflection

Many of Agile’s frameworks offer a template for how and when teams should reflect on products and projects they have completed. This allows both companies as a whole and development teams to gain insights on what worked or what didn’t from the retrospective meetings in Agile frameworks.

Agile principles

• Customer satisfaction is the top priority
• Harness change
• Deliver working software frequently
• Business-wide collaboration is a must
• Build supportive environments around motivated individuals
• Embrace face-to-face decision making
• Measure progress through working software
• Promote sustainable development
• Maintain attention to technical excellence
• Simplicity is essential
• Rely on self-organizing teams
• Regularly reflect on and adjust team efficiency

Agile relies on several specifically defined concepts to organize the development process. These processes help set clear expectations for all stakeholders and minimize potential roadblocks that could delay time to market. One of the most crucial concepts is that every Agile development process revolves around specific roles.

Agile Roles

Agile processes begin with the user or customer in mind by defining a persona to help identify their behavior, needs and how the product will assist them.

Product Owner

The main responsibility of the product owner is to be able to properly distill user insights, internal and external ideas and feedback received into a product vision. Product visions are concise, straightforward sentiments that allow the product’s desired benefit to become clear to all parties. Product owners work alongside the development teams to create user stories that provide more details on the target user, the problem at hand, the solution’s benefits, and criteria for meeting the goal.

Software Development Team

In Agile, software development teams feature diverse, multidisciplinary groups of people working together to deliver end-to-end functioning applications. Teams are often composed of developers, quality assurance engineers, designers, analysts and additional engineers who begin by building the database, business logic and user interface for demos. Agile software development teams meet frequently to ensure progress is being made and every member has a clear vision of their roles in the process.

Agile Methods and Frameworks

While Agile methodology is designed to be adaptable to a business and its market’s needs, the Scrum and Kanban frameworks help define the development process to ensure a timely launch.

Scrum Framework

Scrum is the most widely used framework within Agile and is based upon five values: commitment. courage, focus, openness and respect. Scrum maintains many of the same roles as the basic Agile framework but adds the Scrum Master, who ensures Scrum is understood and executed properly. While Agile is a mindset and method for how to approach work, Scrum is a framework for how to get the work done. 

The Scrum framework uses a backlog of products as its primary source of work that needs to be done. This list is usually determined by the product manager and often includes enhancements or fixes to already existing products. 

Scrum follows set “events” to carry out organized development. These events include:

Sprints: Sprints are timeboxes for accomplishing a goal. These remain consistent throughout the development process and their length will not exceed a single month.

Sprint Planning : Sprint planning is the collaborative process of building the upcoming Sprint with the rest of the development team.

Daily Scrum : 15-minute meetings that occur during every day of the Sprint are called daily scrums. Achievements from the previous day are noted during daily scrums and new expectations are set in place.

Sprint Review: These meetings occur at the end of every Sprint so the scrum team can present their Increment to stakeholders and receive feedback.

Sprint Retrospective : At the end of a Sprint, teams meet to discuss the previous Sprint’s achievements and fallbacks before setting expectations and improvements for the next Sprint.

Kanban Framework

Kanban is a more visual method of Agile project management that helps paint a clear picture of the workflow to identify early bottlenecks for a better result. Born out of the production lines of Toyota in the 1940s, Kanban follows six general practices: visualization, limits to work in progress, flow management, creating explicit policies, utilizing feedback loops and experimental collaboration.

Kanban’s visual methodology is built upon interactive cues that make the development process abundantly clear.

Kanban Board: A physical or software-based management tool that lays out tasks in progress, to-do lists and completed tasks.

Kanban Cards : Kanban cards occupy the Kanban board and represent the individual tasks that the team is responsible for. Information in Kanban cards will often include the task’s name, status, cycle time and deadlines.

Kanban Swimlanes : This element of the Kanban board allows team members to categorize tasks for clear indications of progress. Tasks can be shuffled upon receiving feedback to distinguish between work completed, ongoing or not yet started.

Other Agile Frameworks and Methodologies

Scrum and Kanban have long been the most popular frameworks for Agile project management but other variations exist to meet specific employee, company and market needs. 

Extreme Programming (XP)

Extreme Programming is designed to provide the development team with a higher quality of life while simultaneously improving the quality of the product. It accomplishes this by following practices that include small releases, simple design, pair programming, collective ownership, continuous integration, a coding standard, an on-site customer and a 40-hour workweek.

Crystal is a family of Agile methodologies built around the key components of teamwork, communication, simplicity and reflection. This framework is designed to be adaptable on a project-by-project basis and tailors itself based on pre-existing policies, practices and processes to meet demands.

Feature-Driven Development (FDD)

Feature-Driven Development prioritizes delivering working software swiftly more than any other framework. FDD is built upon shorter phases of work with a goal of actualizing a single feature at a time.

Lean is a methodology that focuses on creating value for the customer by ensuring a company’s people and resources are optimized. The method’ main principles are identifying value, mapping the value stream, creating flow, establishing pull and pursuing perfection.

Scrumban is exactly how it sounds, a combination of Scrum and Kanban. This method uses the structure and timeline of the Scrum with the tools of Kanban.

Agile Project Management Deliverables

While every framework varies in both process and timeliness of reporting, they all share many deliverables:  

Product Vision Statements

The long-term vision and solutions the product will provide.

Product Roadmap

A product’s vision is only as valuable as its roadmap, which identifies how and when the project will be taken from the planning stages through its development to reach the market.

Product Backlog

Keeping track of new features, changes to existing features, bug fixes, infrastructure changes and all other adjustments is crucial to the continued success and development of the product.

Release Plan

Mapping out the specifics of how a product will reach the market and how users will interact with it is crucial knowledge for stakeholders.

Before a product can be released, an increment must first be created. Increments compile all changes in a backlog to create a working version to present to stakeholders for feedback. Increments can then be released, revised or presented again.

Read Next To Stay Agile, Don’t Let Your Product Team Get Trapped in a Loop

Agile is only truly effective if all team members are actively involved in the process and the framework is consistently followed. These tools and best practices can help teams stay on track throughout their development cycle and ensure products reach the market both swiftly and successfully:

Customer Collaboration

As a core value stated in the Agile Manifesto, customer collaboration is at the heart of every Agile project. Ensuring the development team has a clear understanding of the customer’s needs and feedback leads to products that are significantly more useful at launch.

Continuous Integration

Keeping code up to date can be accomplished by producing error-free builds throughout the day, enabling product delivery at any point in time.

Pair Programming

Pair programming is when two programmers work on a single project with the  goal to reduce bugs, enhance designs and encourage knowledge-sharing. One programmer takes on the role of the "driver" while the other "navigates" by providing feedback, watching and learning. 

Burndown Charts

A burndown chart displays the amount of work to be done versus the time left to complete. This representation leads to better project forecasting and ensures that all team members are aware of upcoming workloads.

Code Review

Allowing team members to review their peers' work can foster an environment of appreciation while reducing the number of mistakes brought to an Increment, leading to accelerated and streamlined project timelines.

How to Get Started With Agile: Resources

Getting started with Agile may sound daunting, as it typically requires a shift in how your team or company approaches work. But implementing Agile can often lead to better results overall. 

The first step of incorporating Agile is to get key stakeholders and teams all on the same page. Agile can’t work if all teams aren’t using the methodology.

Choosing the right Agile framework for your organization is a crucial part of implementing it successfully. Whether Scrum, Kanban or another framework is ultimately chosen, it’s best to stick with it. If you switch too often between Scrum and Lean, for example, your team might not be able to tap into the benefits of either.  

Above all, teams should prepare to adjust to the new way of working, staying on the lookout for common Agile mistakes to avoid . 

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What are Agile Methodologies? How & When To Use Them [+Example]

Henny Portman is partner of HWP Consulting. He has 40 years of experience in the project management domain. He was the thought leader within NN Group of the PMO domain and responsible for the introduction and application of the PMO methodologies (portfolio, program and project management) across Europe and Asia. He trains, coaches and directs (senior) program, project, and portfolio managers and project sponsors and built several professional (PM(O) communities. He is an accredited P3O, PRINCE2, MSP, MoP, PRINCE2 Agile, AgilePM, and AgileSHIFT trainer, and a SPC4 SAFe consultant and trainer too. He is a P3M3 trainer and assessor and PMO Value Ring Certified Consultant (PMO Global Alliance). In addition, Henny is international speaker and author of many articles and books in the PM(O) field.

Agile methodologies represent ways of working that prioritize people, team members, and teamwork over the use of specific processes. Learn how to put them to work on your project team.

Agile methodologies are a set of flexible and iterative approaches to software development and project management. The core principles of agile methodologies prioritize collaboration, adaptability, and customer satisfaction. Instead of following a rigid, linear plan, agile embraces change and focuses on delivering smaller, incremental improvements over time.

What Are Agile Methodologies?

Agile methodologies represent ways of working that prioritize people, team members, and teamwork over the use of specific processes, and prioritizes results over sticking to specific deliverables or contracts.

They also prioritize flexibility and creating work iteratively and in increments, rather than segmented and rigid phases (a characteristic of waterfall —read more about agile vs waterfall ). 

Project planning happens continuously throughout the project, rather than all at once at the beginning. The goal is to deliver working software at each iteration or development cycle. Both software development teams and project teams more generally might choose to work this way.

The Benefits Of Agile

Some of the major benefits of agile ways of working include:

• It creates engagement between clients and end users, and increases customer satisfaction
• It can often support culture changes within organizations
• It provides more flexibility, which allows for more project control and the ability to pivot to changing customer needs or business needs
• It reduces waste in the form of meetings and activities that waste time and don’t offer value to the project or end product
• It supports faster detection of bugs and other issues, meaning a quicker turnaround time when it comes to fixing them
• It allows for more accountability and diversity of ideas

Agile Methodologies, Frameworks, & Approaches

In this article, I touch on the following methodologies, frameworks, and approaches, all of which are rooted in the agile principles .

• DevOps / (Bus)DevOps
• Design Thinking

Agile Project Management (AgilePM)

Prince2 agile.

• PMI-Agile Certified Professional (PMI-ACP)

Project Half Double

• Agile Program Management (AgilePgM)
• Scale Agile Framework (SAFe)

Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS)

Scrum at scale (s@s).

• Spotify Model
• Scaled Agile Lean Development (ScALeD)
• Agile Fluency
• Open Space Agility (OSA)
• Agility Scales
• Disciplined Agile (DA)
• Toyota Production System (TPS)

Agile Digital Services (AgileDS)

• Management of Portfolios (MoP)
• Standard for Portfolio Management (SfPfM)
• Agile Portfolio Management (AgilePfM)
• Evidence-Based Portfolio Management (E-B PfM)
• Bimodal Portfolio Management (Bimodal PfM)
• eXtreme Programming (XP)
• Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD)
• Test-driven development (TDD)
• Behavior-Driven Development (BDD)
• Feature-Driven Development (FDD)
• Experiment-Driven Development (EDD)
• User Experience Design (UX Design)
• Agile Business Analysis (AgileBA)
• Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)
• Agile Modeling (AM)

As I said, I don’t go into depth on the approaches that are geared towards the portfolio-level, engineering-level, or organizational culture. So, I’ve put in bold the methodologies that I do cover in some depth in this article. For others, you can find more detail on my blog .

A Bird’s Eye View Of The Agile Forest

To get a first impression of the different approaches, I tried to bring some structure into the jungle of approaches, methods, and frameworks. 

In the image below, which I call my “ bird’s eye view on the agile forest ”, I position the 41 best-known agile approaches in a structure (some are in more than one spot). This picture is based on a simpler version in the book Scaling Agile In Organisaties that I published in 2017.

Below, I break down the structure of the picture. 

In the dark blue boxes, we see agile approaches that are only applicable in IT-focused organizations. All other approaches are in light blue, meaning that they can be used within IT and non-IT-oriented organizations.

The approaches, frameworks, or methods are positioned within two main sections: the “one-time programs/projects” section and the “business as usual/indefinite” section. Some fit within both, so they span the entire area.

Then, the approaches, frameworks, or methods are clustered based on which level they generally operate upon: engineering, team, programme or portfolio level.

Even though it’s light blue, the team level is really applicable in both IT-oriented and non-IT-oriented product development, services development, and operations. Meanwhile, the engineering level focuses specifically on IT-oriented product development.  

I also cluster some methods based upon their target: are they product-targeted, team-targeted, or culture-targeted? The business as usual or indefinite umbrella frameworks that are used more permanently (both product-targeted and team-targeted) focus specifically on IT and product development. The culture-targeted approaches help organizations increase their agility.

A few caveats:

• I haven’t mapped all the known approaches, frameworks and methods in this figure. And, to be honest, I think there is a lot of duplication, and it’s likely that commercial drivers play a role, too, to “develop” the next kid on the block without added value in comparison with the existing approaches, frameworks or methods.
• The line between IT and non-IT applications is not set in stone . For instance, the one-time, temporary projects and programme frameworks and methods are suitable for both IT and non-IT. 

Agile Methodologies That Digital Project Managers Should Know

In this section, I’ll give an overview of some of the most important methods and approaches that digital project managers should know. All mentioned frameworks or approaches embrace the Agile Manifesto and use some form of Scrum, but they differ depending on factors such as whether they are team- or product focused, what level they’re applied on, and more.

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Team-Level Agile

When teams start working with Agile, Scrum is often chosen. This is an obvious choice, but the question is whether this is always the right choice. In this Roman Pichler blog post , the link was made with the life phase of a product. 

During the first phase of a commercial product lifecycle, in which the commercial product is finally put on the market for the first time, the uncertainty is high, and the focus is on on-time delivery of the first market-ready product. A deadline has been set and that date must be met. 

During this phase, the focus of the entire development team is on delivering a commercially marketable product. The Scrum Master helps by removing blockers for the team, streamlining the agile workflows being used, and championing the team and the project, without organizing the team itself. Scrum teams should be self-organizing.

This development process is perfect for Scrum with its iterative approach, being able to deal with uncertainty and working together on the result (the commercial product). Optionally, a second launch can take place with a next set of important functionalities, so that eventually a mature product is put on the market. 

Scrum is centered around 5 main ceremonies , which are as follows:

• Backlog grooming
• Sprint planning
• Daily scrum (also sometimes called a daily standup)
• Sprint review
• Sprint retrospective

Each ceremony is timeboxed according to the length of the sprint itself. Many of these ceremonies have been adopted (wholly or in part) by teams running other agile software development methodologies, to form a patchwork or approximation of Scrum. Read about the differences between Scrum and Kanban (covered below).

In addition to Scrum, on the team level, you will see frameworks such as Kanban (as described in the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams), or its relatives Scrumban, DevOps, and BusDevOps. This can be used within both IT environments and non-IT environments.

During the course of the product lifecycle, we see the amount of uncertainty and requested changes decrease. At this moment you can make good use of Kanban. In a continuous flow, user stories can be picked up, developed, and deployed one by one by individual team members.

In case there is only one permanent agile team to develop and maintain a product or service, and the team uses Scrum or Kanban with a product owner who prioritizes the product backlog, you might ask if there is a need for a project manager. I would say no, leave that team alone.

Get more info on using Kanban for project management here , and more about the differences between Kanban and agile here .

DevOps, (Bus)DevOps, and CI/CD 

If one looks at the often difficult transfer to production environments, the time-to-market can be shortened by properly arranging the transfer and reducing the number of transfer errors when development and production teams are merged, and the integration testing and deployment are automated (Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery, CI/CD). In this way a DevOps team is created.

Scrumban is the combination of Scrum and Kanban (also known as a hybrid project methodology ). In the first instance it was intended as a transitional model to switch from Scrum to Kanban and let the team experience Lean and Kanban concepts.

Nowadays it is an approach in which the team has chosen to work according to Scrum with sprints, but to use the Kanban board and system to continually view and improve its working method to optimize the flow of units of work (ex. user stories).

Scaling Up Towards Product Or Program Level Agile

In order to be able to use an agile way of working in an organization of some size, just having individual agile teams is in most organizations not enough. There are examples of organizations who have or are in the middle of creating a loosely coupled architecture based on micro services (ex. Bol.com in the Netherlands). Each autonomous agile team manages one or more micro services.

However, in most of the organizations the agile way of working needs to be scaled up, and where possible the overarching alignment needs to be taken care of. This can be done by a project manager or by institutionalizing the coordination. 

When institutionalizing the coordination, the project manager disappears but many project management tasks are fulfilled by others (ex. the integration team in Nexus, the Release Train Engineer and the Product Manager in SAFe, etc).

To institutionalize coordination, management of dependencies, and integration between the different permanent agile teams within the “business-as-usual” side, there are various frameworks available.

Nexus, as described in The Nexus Guide, is a framework for product or software development initiatives with three to nine Scrum Teams, in Sprints of up to thirty days. Nexus is the answer of Ken Schwaber, one of the founding fathers of Scrum, to the scalability of Scrum. 

It requires more than just the will and the agile behavior of the different Scrum teams to work together to deliver an integrated product. Nexus is based on and builds on Scrum and the rules and roles formulated in the Scrum guide. We can position Nexus over the team and program levels of SAFe, but it does not offer provisions on portfolio level.

Scrum at Scale (S@S, developed by Jeff Sutherland and Alex Brown) is a modular framework. The starting point at S@S is that an all-encompassing one-size-fits-all framework is not possible, but that every time we have to look at scaling the underlying Scrum principles. 

The framework can be tailored for your own organization by adding the needed S@S modules. S@S builds on the well-known Scrum framework. By analogy with Nexus you could therefore say that S@S is the answer from Jeff Sutherland, next to Ken Schwaber, the other founding father of Scrum, on the scalability of Scrum.

Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS, developed by Craig Larman and Bas Vodde) is an agile framework with rules, based on principles and doing experiments. 

The LeSS company offers a freely accessible knowledge base (less.works) containing the integrated approach, principles, process descriptions, definitions, roles, examples, et cetera, for large-scale, mainly IT-related, product development. Transparency is also a key concept within LeSS. The first version dates from 2005 and since then, work is constantly being done on the use and further development of LeSS.

Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)

Scaled Agile Framework ( SAFe , developed by Dean Leaffingwell) is a framework to enable the scaling up of agile teams in order to create better systems, create higher employee engagement, and make use of correct cost considerations. 

This is the mission of the scaled agile organization and of the founder of SAFe, Dean Leffingwell. The scaled agile organization offers a knowledge base that is freely accessible to everyone, with an integrated approach in the form of process descriptions, definitions, roles, examples, etc. for Lean and Agile product development. 

SAFe is based on five core competencies: lean-agile leadership, team and technical agility, DevOps and release on demands, business solutions and lean systems and lean portfolio management.

Looking back at my map of the methods, in the “Business as usual/indefinite” section, we can see the above methods of SAFe, LeSS, Nexus, and S@S in the product-targeted section. They all relate to examples where multiple teams work on a single complex product or value stream (product-targeted frameworks). 

There’s a division between product and team targets, namely on the basis of cooperation between teams. In other words, can the individual teams work autonomously (with a team focus)? Or, do they have to work together to deliver a new or modified product (with a product focus)?

Additionally, several approaches (not listed in the figure) make a distinction between products that need cooperation between a maximum of nine teams (in total the team of teams must not exceed the Dunbar number of 125-150 people) and a team of teams of teams (ex. SAFe large solutions, Nexus+, LeSS Huge). An example of this in the real world occurs at Philips, a Dutch medical equipment supplier who uses SAFe and works with 20-30 teams on a single product.

The Spotify Model and ScALeD

Looking to the product-targeted frameworks, we see approaches that support IT departments maintaining dozens or hundreds of applications or services. In these settings, the dependencies between the teams are minimal (multiple team targeted frameworks). 

Here, the Spotify model (developed by Henrik Kniberg, Anders Ivarsson, and Joakim Sundén) can be positioned, but also Scaled Agile Lean Development (ScALeD, developed by Peter Beck, Markus Gartner, Christoph Mathis, Stefan Roock, and Andreas Schliep). 

For both groups, there are essential interfaces between the teams in areas such as data integrity, security, and architecture that may not (but sometimes will) ask for coordination when implementing changes. In this group I don’t expect to find a project manager. Because these teams are autonomous, I believe that a project manager will not add value.

On the left side of the map, we see the one-time project frameworks. These are frameworks where the role of project manager is needed. Most of them are a further development of the more traditional project management frameworks:

Agile Project Management (AgilePM, which is derived from Dynamic Systems Development Method, aka DSDM) comes from Agile Business Consortium. It’s a method by which different, possibly permanent, agile teams and non-agile teams are coordinated for the duration of a project.

The AgilePM method for managing agile projects consists of a framework, comprising a philosophy, derived principles, and four building blocks: people, workflows , products, and applications.

The AgilePM philosophy is that every project must be aligned to clearly defined business goals and must focus on the early delivery of products that provide real added value to the business organization.

PRINCE2 Agile  (derived from PRINCE2 from AXELOS) includes both the existing PRINCE2 and the agile way of thinking. The agile way of thinking must be seen as agile behavior, concepts, frameworks, focus areas, and techniques. The existing PRINCE2 principles, processes, and themes remain, but should be tailored using the agile way of working and the project itself. 

PRINCE2 Agile searches for the best of both worlds where the emphasis lies in the use of PRINCE2 within project direction and project management, and an agile approach in the product delivery. Depending on the project situation you can apply more or less of the PRINCE2 or agile way of thinking.

Here’s a short video I created about PRINCE2 Agile.

PMI Agile Certified Practitioner or PMI-ACP (in addition to the PMBoK Guide of PMI) is not a stand-alone framework, but it is a certification based on different books (and the frameworks and underlying techniques described therein). 

Within PMI-ACP, seven domains are identified, each of which is subdivided into a number of task areas. The domains are Agile principles and framework, value-driven delivery, stakeholder management , team performance, adaptive planning , problem detection and solutioning, and continuous improvement.

Project Half Double is run by a community of dedicated project management practitioners who are passionate about what they do. It was co-created in an iterative way by a community of dedicated project management practitioners.

The methodology is based on the four building blocks to achieve double the impact in half the time: impact, flow, leadership, and local translation. 

Impact is all about stakeholder satisfaction. Flow represents high intensity and frequent interaction in project work, learning, and impact. Leadership shows that leaders must embrace uncertainty and make the project happen. Local translation is the fact that you have to tailor the methodology to the needs of the organization.

Disciplined Agile (DA) 

Disciplined Agile (DA) covers both one-time projects and programs as well as business as usual product development. The DA toolkit is a process decision toolkit that describes how agile software development, DevOps, IT, and business teams work in enterprise-class settings.

Disciplined Agile (DA) offers a portfolio process in which, in addition to projects, a number of “business-as-usual” aspects are taken into account, such as the permanent teams and the operational management of existing IT solutions.

Agile Digital Services (AgileDS) is there for delivery and the continuous operations, support, and maintenance of that service (permanent agile delivery team, using the product/service lifecycle).

Learn More About Agile Methods, Frameworks, & Approaches

The concept of enterprise project management focuses on aligning projects with the strategic goals of a company. Agile methods, frameworks, & approaches can be very useful for this.

Want to learn more about how to use Agile methodologies? Check out our expert-created courses in the DPM School.

9 Best Scrum Courses & Certification Options For 2024

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• Product management
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• Common agile development methodologies

12 agile methodologies: Pros, cons, and when to use them

Last updated: May 2024

Agile methodologies provide a framework for software development that is centered around collaboration, iteration, learning, and value delivery. Development teams break large efforts into manageable increments and tackle them in time-boxed cycles. The idea is for your team to have a clear, unified approach for how to define and complete work — for more flexibility, faster time to market, and higher quality software.

Scrum is indisputably the most popular agile framework used by teams today. According to the most recent findings from one annual report , 87 percent of teams leverage scrum. Notably, this particular survey includes all types of teams — from marketing to IT to engineering. That is… a lot of teams. One reason that scrum is adopted by so many is that it offers a lightweight framework for continuous improvement, from sprint planning to retrospectives.

Try the sprint retrospective template below — with a free trial .

Start using this template now

Scrum is popular but it is not the only agile method. The workflows and processes that are optimal for other groups may not be right for you. Your specific industry, company culture, team size, and the type of product you are building will all influence the methodology you choose.

This guide goes deep on different methodologies that agile teams use — such as kanban , lean , and others — so that you can determine the best approach for your team:

Agile development principles

How to choose an agile methodology.

Different types of agile frameworks

Following agile principles can lead to greater productivity and team alignment. When you are flexible and willing to pivot quickly, you reduce risk — it is possible to move fast and give customers what they want.

There are four values at the core of agile approaches, as stated in the Agile Manifesto :

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

Building and delivering a winning product with an agile approach requires cross-functional collaboration across the entire organization: product, engineering, marketing, sales, and support. Whether or not your team follows agile principles, it is crucial to have guidelines and practices in place for how you will complete your work. When everyone understands and agrees on a method, it is easier to make progress towards your goals. You can achieve faster results and deliver a better customer experience .

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7 reasons to adopt an agile approach

• What is agile transformation?
• What is agile product management?

Agile is a state of mind, not a prescription — ideally it should feel expansive and freeing rather than confining. Brian de Haaff Aha! co-founder and CEO

Typically a CEO or CTO will select the methodology, with input and support from engineering team leads. If you are part of a group tasked with choosing which agile methodology to embrace, there are a variety of factors that you should take into account as part of your evaluation.

Organizational characteristics

Size: Smaller companies can often get started with more lightweight approaches, whereas larger enterprises benefit from sophisticated frameworks.

Industry: Some industries require specific checkpoints for security or regulatory concerns, which can impact the agile method the team follows.

Culture: Management styles, communication, and openness to change all influence workflow choices.

Product characteristics

Type: Hardware, software, IT, consumer — what it is you are building and for whom will play a role in methodology selection.

Maturity: Products have a lifecycle with distinct stages.

Complexity: Highly complex products require a defined framework that still allows for adaptability.

Team characteristics

Size: Scrappy startups will have people doing the work of several different roles versus an established company with many groups of engineers supporting.

Experience: Novice developers do not need the weight of a heavy framework, but will benefit from structure.

Location: Small co-located teams have different needs than groups dispersed globally.

• What is the product lifecycle?
• Best practices for managing a product development team
• The Aha! Framework for product development

What are agile best practices?

No matter which methodology you choose, remember that being more agile requires shifting the way you think about the work you are doing. It helps if everyone on the team can articulate the ultimate goal — the reason why you are shifting to agile and the value it will deliver to customers beyond the individual features you ship. This makes rallying the team around a specific way of working a bit smoother.

Regardless of which methodology you choose, you can plan on incorporating the following agile best practices :

Iterative cycles: Teams follow a repeatable cycle of development activities such as planning, design, development, testing, and deployment. Each iteration provides an opportunity to incorporate feedback and deliver a better product.

Incremental development: Developers break down large projects into smaller, more manageable units of work. Since each batch of work builds on previous increments, your product is constantly being improved. Updates come early in the process versus in a single release at the end of development.

Frequent communication: Alignment across the entire product development team depends on ongoing communication. Regularly connecting with cross-functional teammates minimizes costly rework. Agile teams touch base on capacity, work status, and any issues that need to be addressed.

Time-boxing: Developers focus on completing one task at a time before moving on to the next project or phase of work.

Retrospectives: Team members check in with one another at regular intervals (typically after a set time-boxed period like a sprint) to reflect on how to improve processes going forward. Agile retrospectives facilitate the kind of transparent, open communication that allows teams to constantly evolve.

What are best practices of agile development teams?

• How to structure your product development team
• What is an agile retrospective?

When to invest in agile workflow tools

You can always try to adapt an existing workflow tool to fit an agile framework. But bug-tracking tools, simple task management boards, and spreadsheet tools can only take you so far. As you begin to mature in your processes, you will likely find that you need an agile workflow tool that provides templates, reporting capabilities, and empowers you to collaborate closely with product management.

Deliver more value with Aha! Develop — sign up for a free trial .

Different types of agile development frameworks.

There are many different agile development methodologies that teams adopt. Some stick to a single methodology, while others opt to use multiple frameworks. Many also adopt a hybrid approach, combining elements of one methodology with others to meet their needs. For example, "scrumban" incorporates both the structure of scrum and the workflow visuals of kanban. Another example is The Aha! Framework — an approach to product development that fuses prescribed strategic planning with flexible agile work.

No matter which one(s) you choose to follow, each methodology promotes the elements at the root of agile development — flexibility, collaboration, iteration, short release cycles, and immediate feedback.

Crystal focuses on customization. It empowers agile teams to define the most effective way of collaborating, based on details like the number of team members and the specific type of project you are working on. As a developer, you have the autonomy to adjust processes and optimize workflows to fit your needs.

Dynamic systems development methodology (DSDM)

Dynamic systems development methodology (DSDM) combines the principles of time-boxing and collaboration with an emphasis on goals and business impact. It lays out distinct phases for tackling projects, from evaluating feasibility to creating prototypes to implementation. DSDM is typically selected by larger organizations and governments with the budget to cover overhead and implementation.

Extreme programming (XP)

Extreme programming is all about collaboration and transparency. XP espouses five key values: communication, simplicity, feedback, courage, and respect. Developers typically engage in pair programming — sitting together and writing code on one machine. Small teams that are co-located and close-knit can benefit from using XP.

Feature-driven development (FDD)

Feature-driven development espouses a customer-centric view to software development. By prioritizing user stories, FDD helps teams deliver more features that customers want. Work moves quickly — developers typically build each feature in two weeks. FDD can be useful for companies with a more rigid or hierarchical structure, where lead developers make decisions that impact the rest of the team.

Kanban is a visual method for managing workflows. Teams use a kanban board to quickly see the status of upcoming work. The goal is to reduce lead time by optimizing the flow of work and limiting the amount of work in progress. Kanban is popular with many types of agile development teams, as well as product and project teams.

Large-scale scrum (LeSS)

Large-scale scrum defines 10 principles for deploying and maintaining scrum across an entire company. LeSS was created to support organizations with multiple scrum teams. There are two configurations: one for two to eight scrum teams and one for more than eight scrum teams. LeSS co-creators Craig Larman and Bas Vodde co-wrote a book that outlines how teams can adopt the principles.

Lean software development (LSD)

Lean software development promotes a minimalist approach — eliminating waste, ensuring quality, and delivering quickly. Many growing teams rely on lean practices to help them create more functionality faster.

The Nexus framework was created by Ken Schwaber, one of the co-creators of scrum. It is an agile model that is used in tandem with scrum. Nexus adds an integration team composed of a product owner, scrum master , and integration team members. The nexus team is focused on facilitating dependencies and other issues between teams.

Rapid application development (RAD)

Rapid application development emphasizes speed and flexibility. Developers build prototypes, collect user feedback, and iterate often. RAD is ideal for highly skilled teams that need to develop a product quickly (within a few months) and are able to collaborate with customers during the process.

Scaled agile framework (SAFe®)

The Scaled Agile Framework is a set of principles, guidelines, and prescribed levels for implementing agile and lean principles at scale. SAFe is used by more than 70 of the 100 companies at the top of the Fortune 500 list.

Scrum is the most popular agile development methodology. Teams work in time-boxed sprints of two to four weeks and each person has a clearly delineated role, such as scrum master or product owner. After an initial planning session, teams meet daily and also have retrospectives at the end of each sprint to reflect on how to improve. Scrum is well-suited to small teams that are nimble, cohesive, and willing to pivot often based on stakeholder feedback.

Scrumban is a hybrid of scrum and kanban. It was initially developed as a way for teams to transition from scrum to kanban or vice versa. But over time it gained traction as a standalone methodology, not just as a stopgap. The scrum part of scrumban gives teams defined guidelines for roles, planning, and how to run sprints effectively. The kanban part of scrumban offers a way to balance work against resources with the pull system — plus visualizations of work in progress.

What about DevOps?

It is also worth mentioning DevOps , an approach to software delivery that grew out of agile philosophy. DevOps emphasizes short development cycles and continuous delivery of high-quality software. The focus is on close working relationships between the development and operations teams. Many principles of DevOps — such as automated testing, short feedback loops, and frequent collaboration — are seen in the agile development methodologies above.

Read next: What is agile transformation?

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The 6 Agile Methodology Steps That You Need to Know

Home » Blog » The 6 Agile Methodology Steps That You Need to Know

Agile project management promises to produce short development lifecycles and frequent product releases. This allows the teams to handle and react to client needs effectively.

There are many popular agile frameworks like Scrum, Kanban, Dynamic Software Development Method (DSDM), Crystal Methodologies, Feature Driven Development (FDD) and Extreme Programming (XP); but all these agile methodologies have the same underlying process of six basic steps.

Agile Methodology Steps:

• Planning the Project
• Creating the Product Roadmap
• Planning the Release
• Planning the Sprint(s)
• Daily Stand-up Meetings
• Sprint review and retrospective meetings

1. Planning the Project

Before developing any project, a team needs to understand the end goals of the project. A team also needs to know the project value to their organization and of course, the client. 

Once the team members are aware of the above two factors, they need to know the steps to achieve the end goal for their clients.

2. Creating the Product Roadmap

A product roadmap is all about features breakdown of the final product. This is a planning stage component that will be used by the teams to develop the product during sprints.

Product roadmap also means creating the product backlog . Product backlog will contain all the tasks that will be pulled by the teams during the development phase of Agile i.e sprints.

3. Planning the Release

Once we are done with planning the project and creating the roadmap, the next step is to plan the release. Unlike the waterfall model that forces complete development before a release, Agile methodology tends to deliver features of the product at the end of each smaller development life cycle.

Also, before starting the project, a high level plan for feature releases is to be developed and at the beginning of each development lifecycle , you can re-evaluate the release plan for a feature.

4. Planning the Sprint

Before starting the actual development (sprint), a “sprint planning meeting” is needed to be held among the stakeholders. In the meeting, certain task responsibilities are going to be assigned to each member

After that the steps of implementing those tasks are to be briefly discussed. 

Make sure the task load is balanced i.e every member is given an equal share of load and no one is overburdened.

A graphical workflow document can be developed to have shared understanding and transparency among the team members. It can also be used to identify and remove the bottlenecks.

5. Daily Stand-up Meetings

During the sprint, daily short 15 minutes stand-up meetings are expected. This will help the team members to reassess anything if needed. 

In a daily stand-up meeting, a participant can tell what he/she accomplished the day before and what he/she is going to do on the same day.

6. Sprint Review and Retrospective Meetings

At the end of each sprint, two more meetings are expected. A sprint review meeting and a sprint retrospective meeting.

A sprint review is going to happen with the client to show them the finished product. This also opens the door for any important reassessment or feedback on the deliverable from the client. Such feedback can be incorporated in next sprint cycles.

Now. a sprint retrospective meeting is about analysing-

• What went well in the sprint?
• What can be improved or made better in the next sprint sessions? 
• Whether the task load distribution was balanced?
• How much the team members were able to accomplish and how much was expected?

Sprint retrospective meetings are essential for new teams as they help you understand- How much can actually be accomplished by a team and what can be the efficient sprint length for the projects in the future.

To summarise, Agile methodology steps try to bring out more product releases in a short period of time.

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Whereas the traditional "waterfall" approach has one discipline contribute to the project, then "throw it over the wall" to the next contributor, agile calls for collaborative cross-functional teams. Open communication, collaboration, adaptation, and trust amongst team members are at the heart of agile. Although the project lead or product owner typically prioritizes the work to be delivered, the team takes the lead on deciding how the work will get done, self-organizing around granular tasks and assignments.

Agile isn't defined by a set of ceremonies or specific development techniques. Rather, agile is a group of methodologies that demonstrate a commitment to tight feedback cycles and continuous improvement.

The original Agile Manifesto didn't prescribe two-week iterations or an ideal team size. It simply laid out a set of core values that put people first. The way you and your team live those values today – whether you do scrum by the book, or blend elements of kanban and XP – is entirely up to you.

Why choose agile?

Teams choose agile so they can respond to changes in the marketplace or feedback from customers quickly without derailing a year's worth of plans. "Just enough" planning and shipping in small, frequent increments lets your team gather feedback on each change and integrate it into future plans at minimal cost.

But it's not just a numbers game—first and foremost, it's about people. As described by the Agile Manifesto, authentic human interactions are more important than rigid processes. Collaborating with customers and teammates is more important than predefined arrangements. And delivering a working solution to the customer's problem is more important than hyper-detailed documentation.

An agile team unites under a shared vision, then brings it to life the way they know is best. Each team sets their own standards for quality, usability, and completeness. Their "definition of done" then informs how fast they'll churn the work out. Although it can be scary at first, company leaders find that when they put their trust in an agile team, that team feels a greater sense of ownership and rises to meet (or exceed) management's expectations.

Agile yesterday, today, and tomorrow

The publication of the Agile Manifesto in 2001 marks the birth of agile as a methodology. Since then, many agile frameworks have emerged such as scrum, kanban , lean , and Extreme Programming (XP). Each embodies the core principles of frequent iteration, continuous learning, and high quality in its own way. Scrum and XP are favored by software development teams, while kanban is a darling among service-oriented teams like IT or human resources.

Today, many agile teams combine practices from a few different frameworks, spiced up with practices unique to the team. Some teams adopt some agile rituals (like regular stand-ups, retros, backlogs, etc.), while others created a new agile practice ( agile marketing teams who adhere to the Agile Marketing Manifesto).

The agile teams of tomorrow will value their own effectiveness over adherence to doctrine. Openness, trust, and autonomy are emerging as the cultural currency for companies who want to attract the best people and get the most out of them. Such companies are already proving that practices can vary across teams, as long as they're guided by the right principles.

Atlassian on agile

The way each team practices agile should be unique to their needs and culture. Indeed, no two teams inside Atlassian have identical agile practices.

Although many of our teams organize their work in sprints, estimate in story points, and prioritize their backlogs, we're not die-hard practitioners of scrum. Or kanban. Or any other trademarked methodology. Instead, we give each team the autonomy to cherry-pick the practices that will make them most effective. And we encourage you to take a similar approach.

For example, if you're on a queue-oriented team like IT, kanban provides a solid foundation for your agile practice. But nothing should stop you from sprinkling in a few scrum practices like demo sessions with stakeholders or regular retrospectives.

The key to doing agile right is embracing a mindset of continuous improvement . Experiment with different practices and have open, honest discussions about them with your team. Keep the ones that work, and throw out the ones that don't.

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Because we believe each team must forge their own path to agility, you won't find highly prescriptive information on this site. What you will find, however, is a no-nonsense guide to working iteratively, delivering value to your customers, and embracing continuous improvement. Read it, discuss it with your team, and make the changes that make sense to you.

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Agile explained: The 4 Agile Manifesto values and 12 principles

Editor’s note : This article was last updated on 29 December 2022.

The Agile Manifesto marked the birth of Agile, a professional worldview that has sparked innovation in ways the authors didn’t expect and reached far beyond the world of software.

The Agile Manifesto specifies four values and 12 principles that guide efficient software product development.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll introduce you to the concept of Agile product development and then break down the Agile Manifesto with a focus on its four values and 12 principles.

Before we get into the history of the Agile Manifesto and a detailed breakdown of how its tenets are implemented in practice, let’s quickly review its values and principles:

What are the 4 Agile Manifesto values?

The four values of the Agile Manifesto 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

What are the 12 Agile Manifesto principles?

The 12 principles of agile software development as outlined in the Agile Manifesto are as follows:

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.

Click through the jump links above (or just keep scrolling) to learn more about what each of the 12 Agile principles means in practice and how to apply it in your organization. Many of these principles intertwine, so expect to see a lot of overlap.

What is Agile?

Agile is a mindset and philosophy around building products that espouses collaboration, customer-centricity, and expecting and responding to change.

A common misconception is that agile is about development speed or velocity; it isn’t. Also counter to popular belief, agile is neither a methodology nor a framework. These labels are reserved for more specific and prescriptive agile models.

For instance, scrum is an example of a popular agile “framework”  —  a set of instructions for putting the agile values and principles into practice. Thought leaders and consultancies create many agile models. These frameworks should not be confused with Agile itself.

What is the Agile Manifesto?

The Agile Manifesto is a short, 68-word statement that establishes a broad system of purpose and values for meaningful, efficient, continuous software development:

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

Don’t let the statement’s brevity fool you; these words pack a punch. The Agile Manifesto has changed the tech world and impacted how teams work across all industries,  not only software.

A brief history

The Agile Manifesto established the concept of agile product development. The brief but bold declaration was written and signed in 2001 by 17 seasoned software engineers, some of whom have been writing code since the 1960s and ’70s. The machines and programming languages available at the time were as slow as the businesses they supported. Computers served elite science use cases more than business.

Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, waterfall , or “heavyweight,” practices dominated product development, where the emphasis was placed on upfront planning and documentation. Entering the new millennium, these experts had been collaborating on what were called at the time “lightweight” software development practices.

Popular lightweight frameworks of the 1990s were Crystal, Extreme Programming, and scrum , the most popular framework today. The creators of these leading frameworks and others were all signatories of the Agile Manifesto.

Today, agile is the standard. It all started with the Agile Manifesto.

Breaking down the Agile Manifesto

The Agile Manifesto consists of a simple preamble, four values, and one clarifying sentence. Let’s dig into each element and unpack what it means in more detail.

Preamble: Continuous learning is critical

The first sentence of the Agile Manifesto is the most overlooked and understated. Though seemingly insignificant, the signers have said this preamble actually took a considerable amount of time to write .

People often reference the four values without considering the introduction, but it’s important to establish a philosophy of constant change and improvement as well as generosity:

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.

Let’s get even more granular and zoom in on the first five words of the Agile Manifesto: “We are uncovering better ways….”

To embrace the Agile Manifesto means to commit to continuous improvement  — in other words,  to be joyfully and perpetually dissatisfied. From there, we should remember how much the discoveries of others have helped us. Share learnings; there are always new learnings to be had.

I’ve seen this play out in sprint retrospectives , postmortems, manager and/or peer feedback, evolving processes, and definitions of done (DoDs) — sharing learnings and listening to the understandings of others is crucial to any agile project. If you look around and see a lot of process that has gone unchanged for some time, you probably haven’t been “uncovering better ways.”

The world changes and life changes. To be agile means to embrace change and continuous learning .

The twist at the end

Throughout the four value statements, it can be easy to forget that none of these things are bad. The point of an even over statement is that one part is good, but the other is even better.

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Before we dig into the four values, let’s skip to the bit at the end, where the Agile Manifesto tells us how to read the values correctly. This is also important but often forgotten:

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

As we review the four Agile Manifesto values, we should recognize that the right side is good, but the left is even more valuable.

The 4 agile values

The 4 values as stipulated in the Agile Manifesto are as follows.

1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

To be agile means to be all-in on people. The first value of the Agile Manifesto might be the most ahead of its time. The authors knew that people mattered and collaboration was essential.

We can infer more about the intention here by looking at the 12 Agile Principles, which are an elaboration of the fundamental values.

Of the 12 Agile Principles, at least six involve human relationships:

• Principle No. 4 establishes a new kind of relationship where “business people and developers must work together daily”
• Principle No. 5 says to “build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need”
• Principle No. 6 asserts that “face-to-face conversation” is the best way to communicate
• Principle No. 8 introduces the symbiotic relationship between “sponsors, developers, and users”
• Principle No. 11 claims the best deliverables come from “self-organizing teams”
• Principle No. 12 encourages teams to “[reflect] on how to become more effective” and adjust accordingly

It’s critical to remember how these even over statements should be interpreted. The right side of the statement (processes and tools) is valuable. However, individuals and interactions are more valuable. To rephrase this first Agile Manifesto value, we might say, “Processes and tools are good, but individuals and their interactions are even more important.”

In the real world, I’ve seen this play out in cross-functional squads made up of product , engineering , design , quality assurance , data analytics , and even marketing stakeholders  —  working day after day, in a single team, on a customer problem.

2. Working software over comprehensive documentation

While the first Agile Manifesto value is probably the most foundational of the four, the second value might be the most controversial today. The emphasis on “working software” often alarms modern tech professionals. What is so great about software that only “works?”

I have a friend who is a product manager at a large company. While developing their product, they spent up to a year digging into user research and discussing customer insights without shipping anything to the customer. In the end, they produced a small, insignificant feature that didn’t meet any real customer need.

So in cases like these, everyone wants to be a philosopher and empathize with customers, but no one can actually deliver.

Getting a minimum viable product (MVP) out now is better than getting a “perfect” product out much later. Of course, a “working” product is not the end goal, but it is required for delivering value to customers and businesses. If we’re not shipping, then what are we actually accomplishing?

Comprehensive documentation is good, according to the Agile Manifesto. This is how the even over statements work. For example, the second value could be rephrased as, “Documentation is good, but delivering working software is even more important.” A product with no documentation is preferable to having documentation and no product.

3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

In the third Agile Manifesto value, the reference to “contract negotiation” tends to perplex some readers. Keep in mind that the right side of the statement is still valuable, so contract negotiation is good. But what is this contract negotiation that we’re talking about?

Contract negotiation refers to any agreements involved in the work, internally or externally. Yes, this includes any political dealings and vendor paperwork, but there’s more to it than that. Many agile professionals would interpret contract negotiations to also include deadlines , budget agreements, and scope agreements with internal stakeholders or customers.

A modern paraphrase might be, “Business commitments are good, but the voice of the customer should come first.”

I’ve seen agile teams live out this value by prioritizing research and discovery work ahead of execution to ensure the right solution is built. I’ve seen granular Gantt charts replaced with quarterly and monthly Gantt charts or higher-level Now-Next-Later roadmaps .

4. Responding to change over following a plan

The fourth and final Agile Manifesto value asserts that following a plan is good, but responding to change is even more valuable.

Before the lightweight frameworks of the 1980s and ’90s, organizations might’ve spent years planning a solution, then years building the solution. By the time the original solution was ready, the problem had evolved enough to render the solution useless. These types of experiences and observations led engineers to seek better ways of developing software.

A well-known quote from former U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower comes to mind: “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” The point is that plans are good to work on, but they should always consider the constant uncertainty surrounding them. Plans are only as good as their flexibility.

The 12 agile principles

To review and for quick reference, the 12 Agile Manifesto principles (in shorthand) are as follows.

1. Satisfy the customer

What does it mean.

As agile professionals, we believe in relieving customer pain by delivering valuable products and features quickly and regularly. Why? We can get feedback faster to improve and increase value to customers — and because we know that we never get it entirely right the first time.

How to apply Agile principle No. 1

• Focus on customers’ problems
• Build minimum viable products
• Operate with minimum valuable processes
• Foster a culture of learning and iteration in your team

2. Welcome changing requirements

Embrace uncertainty. The environment is constantly changing, and change is something we can use to our advantage. To be competitive, not only should we anticipate change, but we should welcome it.

How to apply Agile principle No. 2

• Update sprint goals mid-sprint more frequently
• Set the tone for others by not being surprised when needs change
• Celebrate when your team pivots
• Use continuous discovery habits to stay in tune with customer problems and the market

3. Deliver working software frequently

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

Take baby steps. There are multiple advantages to releasing more minor product updates more frequently. Shipping smaller increments regularly and being able to deploy quickly mitigates risk. Additionally, you can add value to the business by delivering more frequently and learning faster.

How to apply Agile principle No. 3

• Test how quickly your team can get a change live by making small changes (e.g., a comment in some code). This will help you gauge where you are and optimize your ability to respond to change
• Break up stories into smaller pieces. Need some inspiration? Consider what it might look like to only have one-point stories or only stories that can be delivered within a day

4. Work together daily

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

Who is included in “business people?” I interpret this phrase to refer to anyone not on the tech teams — e.g., product, design, marketing stakeholders, etc. Of course, it depends on the organization, project, or outcome you hope to achieve.

No matter who is involved, transparency and collaboration should be day-to-day normalcy.

How to apply Agile principle No. 4

• Consider inviting other stakeholders to team meetings while managing expectations on roles and responsibilities as necessary
• Make planning and roadmap artifacts more accessible so others can follow along with progress and ask questions or provide feedback
• Create a visual of the team but include colleagues who might not technically be on the same team according to the official org chart
• Use an open Slack channel (or chat tool of choice) instead of keeping it private

5. Build projects around motivated individuals

There are a lot of words packed in the fifth agile principle: motivation, environment, support, trust — with individual people at the center of it all.

A supportive environment will mean different things to different people. It comes down to knowing your team and how to communicate with and support the individuals within it.

How to apply Agile principle No. 5

You might find this principle the most challenging because it cannot be isolated to a specific level in an organization. For example, as a product manager, your hands might be tied in many ways.

That said, some things are always within your control. To improve the work environment as a manager, you can:

• Make work fun (whatever that means to you and your team)
• Treat people as individuals and get to know them personally
• Celebrate wins, big and small
• Establish a compelling vision for your product or program

6. Communicate face-to-face

Video conferencing tools have made “face-to-face” conversations more effortless than ever, but they still don’t entirely replace in-person interaction.

At the same time, there are many advantages to remote work , so the takeaway isn’t that teams must be colocated, either.

How to apply Agile principle No. 6

• Turn your video on
• Meet in person from time to time
• Don’t be shy to jump on a quick call to hash something out in real time (using Slack’s huddle feature, for example)
• When using text, sprinkle in emoji reactions to avoid any confusion about your tone

7. Measure progress by working products

Basically, it means to cut through the BS. The seventh agile principle stipulates that working software is the “ primary measure of progress,” but some folks get alarmed because they read “ only measure of progress” instead.

This principle can feel out of touch in a world where we value customer problem statements , fancy visual frameworks , user research , market research , analytics , and anthropology.

While these factors are important, what good are they if we aren’t getting any tools out into the wild to help customers in real life?

How to apply Agile principle No. 7

• Document and plan as you go
• Prioritize building things that will help customers now
• Double down on agile principle No. 1
• Apply healthy pressure to teams by asking, “Have we actually helped customers lately?”

8. Maintain a constant pace indefinitely (marathons, not sprints)

Agility means that burnouts, late nights, and last-minute emergencies should be rare. The cross-functional team should plan to move at a sustainable rate. This can be supported by adopting the other agile principles, as well.

How to apply Agile principle No. 8

A common mistake people make when reading the eighth principle is to misinterpret the word “pace.” Most often, “maintaining a constant pace” means the team should slow down, not speed up. Plan ahead and put systems in place that make it normal to react to change.

9. Pay continuous attention to technical excellence

You should take pride in your craftsmanship. Vince Lombardi, famed NFL head coach for whom the Super Bowl trophy is named, once said, “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.”

The ninth agile principle doesn’t aim for perfection; we should acknowledge that excellence in the tech world is a rapidly moving target and to hit it requires “continuous attention.”

How to apply Agile principle No. 9

• Host lunch-and-learns and “brown bag” educational opportunities
• Build in time to incorporate tech debt into sprints
• Foster a culture in which team members are encouraged to maintain quality and sustainable implementations for longer-term agility

10. Keep it simple

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

This phrase might seem counterintuitive at first glance and often strikes people as odd or unnecessarily confusing, but it’s actually pretty profound. Basically, it means less is more.

Maximizing the amount of work not done calls for a mental shift from doing more to doing less. Essentially, this means that you spend more time doing only what is necessary and waste less time complicating your processes.

How to apply Agile principle No. 10

• Understand the reason and the vision for what you’re working on
• Think about what is really needed. Consider a light framework, such as MoSCoW or Needs vs. Nice-to-Haves
• Determine the simplest solution to the problem and consider the tradeoffs

11. Trust your team to self-organize

The best work comes out of teams that are allowed to plan and execute among themselves.

Principle no. 11 is not about anarchy or some progressive operating model where people form their own clans and do whatever they want — remember, this statement was written in 2001.

The point of the 11th agile principle is that motivated and supported individuals are trusted and allowed to immerse themselves in a problem space and come up with the best solution.

Trust doesn’t just magically emerge, of course, so this advice is sometimes easier said than done.

How to apply Agile principle No. 11

• Create organizations of teams that are motivated and empowered. Train those teams on framing problems and divergent and convergent thinking
• Create teams that are cross-functional to minimize dependencies
• Reflect on how teams are measured and what behavior this encourages

12. Reflect and adapt

How to apply agile principle no. 12.

The first mistake teams often make is running sprint retrospectives that are too predictable and too formal . Notice this agile principle makes no mention of a time frame; there’s no name or structure for this team reflection.

The second mistake (which often stems from the first) is a lack of accountability; too often, there is no follow-up or tracking of action items. I don’t believe every observation in a retrospective-like conversation needs to have an action item. However, when action items are defined, you should establish some accountability to ensure that progress is made.

How to apply this principle

• Check in regularly with your team and colleagues
• Track next steps when necessary
• Have fun and be genuine

What the 12 Agile principles are not

Now that you have seen and understand what all 12 Agile Manifesto principles are, let’s review what they are not .

The agile principles are not a methodology or part of a methodology. The principles aren’t really a framework, either. In the Agile world, frameworks are the more prescriptive sets of rules, systems, and processes to help teams put the agile principles into action.

The agile principles are statements that add more color to the higher-level values of the Agile Manifesto. They are the specific stances of professionals who value continuous learning and improvement in an increasingly unpredictable world.

Is the Agile Manifesto still relevant today?

I believe the Agile Manifesto has aged quite well, all things considered. It is still a set of values that offers a healthy challenge for tech and business professionals alike.

Not only does the Agile Manifesto remain helpful, but many other industries outside of software development have adopted it. Simply tweaking a few references to “software” has gone a long way toward helping marketing teams, human resources, and many others to deliver valuable outcomes more efficiently.

Despite dozens of Agile Manifesto alternatives , extensions, and calls for complete replacement , the general consensus is that the document has stood the test of time remarkably well. Arguments from critics are often misguided, unconvincing, or just not adding enough value to get widespread attention. There is so much content out there now, a new Agile Manifesto would need to be revolutionary to get traction.

Agile Manifesto TL;DR summary

To summarize the key takeaways from this Agile Manifesto guide:

• The preamble, which is the most overlooked part of the manifesto, encourages continually “uncovering better ways” and “helping others” along the way
• Value No. 1 is the most ahead of its time and places people, collaboration, inclusion, and relationships at the center of Agile. To paraphrase this value for modern software development: Processes and tools are valuable, but people and relationships are even more important
• Value No. 2 is the most controversial today because it espouses “working software over comprehensive documentation.” Modern paraphrase: Robust documentation is good, but actually delivering solutions is better
• Value No. 3 is the most misunderstood due to “contract negotiation” and vagueness around “customer.” Modern paraphrase: Commitments are good, but building the right thing is better
• Value No. 4 is the heart of Agile: “Responding to change over following a plan”

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One Reply to "Agile explained: The 4 Agile Manifesto values and 12 principles"

You’ve written this guide beautifully. “Joyfully & perpetually dissatisfied should be trademarked. Thank you.

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Planning in an agile organization

Companies large and small are discovering that agility—the ability to quickly reorient the organization toward valuable opportunities—can improve the performance of working groups across the enterprise. 1 A McKinsey survey found that agile teams of various kinds were 1.5 times more likely to report financial outperformance than other business teams and 1.7 times more likely to report nonfinancial outperformance. Eighty-one percent of respondents in agile units report a moderate or significant increase in overall performance since their transformations began. For more, see “ How to create an agile organization ,” October 2017, McKinsey.com. Agile ways of working can also reduce risk and create flexibility, because they allow teams to test and validate ideas before the business commits to developing them. These benefits can be lessened, however, if companies don’t apply agile concepts to enterprise-wide processes—particularly the planning and budgeting processes, by which companies translate their strategy into decisions about how to allocate people and resources. When agile teams must submit ideas to a planning committee and wait months for funding, they can miss out on precious opportunities to win customers or boost efficiency. At the business-unit level, the company can be slow to reallocate money and resources to endeavors that create the most value.

Stay current on your favorite topics

Most of the techniques that agile organizations use to make planning more dynamic are not new. Rather, they’ve been tried and tested by companies across industries and geographies. What’s apparent, though, is that agile organizations can use them to match the pace of planning with the pace of agile teams. These techniques help corporate planners to ratchet up the frequency of resource-allocation decisions and to grant teams more leeway to spend their budgets, while still ensuring that money and people are deployed productively.

To achieve agility in planning, companies should combine elements that promote both stability and dynamism . 2 For more on the way that stability and dynamism together promote agility, see Wouter Aghina, Aaron De Smet, and Kirsten Weerda, “ Agility: It rhymes with stability ,” McKinsey Quarterly , December 2015, McKinsey.com, and Wouter Aghina, Aaron De Smet, Gerald Lackey, Michael Lurie, and Monica Murarka, “ The five trademarks of agile organizations ,” January 2018, McKinsey.com. The elements that lend stability to agile planning are setting clear strategic priorities and defining closely related objectives for teams. The dynamism in agile planning comes from holding quarterly planning sessions, in which funding is redistributed among business units, and providing teams with support to use funding as they see fit. In this article, we will explore these four elements and illustrate them with examples from several companies.

Focus on a small set of strategic priorities

While an excess of strategic priorities can create difficulties for any organization, it can be especially problematic for agile companies, where empowered teams enjoy the rights to make more day-to-day decisions than project teams at traditional command-and-control companies. Our experience suggests that if agile teams each have their own idea about the company’s strategic priorities, then these teams can end up pursuing endeavors that are too diverse to produce significant performance gains in any single area.

Executives at an agile company must therefore agree on a small, well-defined set of priorities—ideally, ten or fewer. 3 A McKinsey survey found that agile performance units are more likely than other performance units to have “actionable strategic guidance” and a “shared vision and purpose.” For more, see “ How to create an agile organization ,” October 2017, McKinsey.com. These priorities should then guide planning and budgeting decisions at all levels of the organization, such that business units receive extra funding if their main initiatives support the main strategic priorities, and business units assign more funding to individual teams whose work makes a demonstrable contribution to the strategic priorities. Additionally, these priorities should be updated on a quarterly basis to ensure they’re still in line with changing customer and market trends. That is not to say that agile companies should not explore and experiment. Experimentation outside the strategic goals is often accomplished by granting teams and individuals certain capacity to pursue their discretionary endeavors. For example, Google encourages its employees to spend 20 percent of their time on projects that they think will benefit the company.

A North American provider of financial and software services developed a five-year strategy consisting of three pillars and eight enablers that translated into more than 25 priorities. Since each priority would require rapid execution and frequent monitoring, leadership soon realized that it could not look after so many priorities at once, let alone explain them all to the company’s workforce. To focus its attention, the executive team chose to identify no more than five strategic priorities to pursue every year. Executives also set clear, measurable goals that they could use in quarterly reviews of the company’s progress toward its strategic priorities, a practice we explore more in the following section.

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Ensure teams have clear, specific goals.

Once executives have established the company’s strategic priorities, they need to convey those to personnel at every level of the organization. Managers and other employees may be working on hundreds of activities that seem important from their vantage points, so it’s important to make sure that everyone puts most of their energy into endeavors that correspond to the company’s priorities. We have found that articulating company priorities in a concise memo and distributing it to the entire company greatly helps to orient agile teams toward the same set of high-level priorities.

Strategy memos, however, are ordinarily too general for teams to use as guidance for their day-to-day decisions. Agile organizations should therefore translate strategic priorities into more specific goals that teams can work toward. 4 A McKinsey survey found that agile performance units are 2.2 times more likely than other performance units to maintain “performance orientation.” For more, see “ How to create an agile organization ,” October 2017, McKinsey.com. One way that agile organizations can do this is by establishing objectives and key results (OKRs). An OKR spells out the company’s priorities in terms of specific accomplishments and performance improvements. The objective consists of a clearly defined qualitative change, while the key result is a specific, often quantitative performance target that must be met. Agile organizations should set OKRs annually and assess progress against them on a quarterly basis.

The setting of OKRs shouldn’t be a strictly top-down exercise. Ideally, staff at each level will be allowed to suggest changes to the OKRs and outline the budget they will need to meet them. These suggestions should be aggregated, reconciled, and taken into account. The idea is not to challenge and debate the premise for every OKR (as an organization might do in a zero-based-budgeting approach), but to make reasonable adjustments to the OKRs. Most organizations will set budget envelopes (fixed amounts of funds, allocated for a duration) at different levels to accelerate the process and reduce variability.

For example, a global financial institution set a strategic priority to make its customer-service journey more efficient. In line with that strategy, it established an OKR to reduce the cost of servicing customers (the objective) by 50 percent (the key result). Achieving the OKR would require coordinated effort among the “squads,” or teams, working on different aspects of the customer-service journey, such as product, technology, policy, and risk. To promote alignment among the squads, executives gathered the squad leaders to discuss cost-reduction opportunities and what each squad could do to capture them. Thereafter, each squad was assessed with respect to a single metric: reduction in the cost of servicing customers. The single OKR encouraged the teams to focus on cost-reduction initiatives and deprioritize other activities, while promoting a shared understanding of how the squads would be assessed each quarter.

Accelerate planning cycles to reallocate resources more frequently

Agile teams can turn out minimum viable products (MVPs) in just a few weeks, and they reallocate funding continuously, with priorities being refined every sprint. 5 Ibid . Because their work rate is so high, these teams can be constrained or even crippled if they must wait for funding to be dispensed in annual cycles. For example, a large North American insurance provider that allocated funds on an annual basis struggled to promptly finance innovative ideas once its customer-facing teams had adopted agile ways of working. A team that conceived a promising product concept would have to wait until the end of the year before it could start working on it—by which time competitors would have already released similar products.

To help teams obtain funding more quickly, the insurance provider set aside a portion of its budget to be allocated on a quarterly basis. The company then invited agile teams to apply for the funding they would need to develop new ideas. Rather than entirely funding a new idea up front, though, the planning committee allocated each team just enough funding to reach the next milestone in a project, then evaluated the outcome before releasing any more funding.

These decisions were made during quarterly planning sessions: gatherings of business leaders from multiple functions, where teams describe their progress and business outcomes with respect to OKRs and outline their plans for future quarters. The leadership group then assesses funding proposals, whether for new projects or for the continuation of existing projects, and decides what to fund.

Here is an example from the insurance company mentioned above. In one quarterly planning session, a team from the employee-benefits business made a case that it needed a new file-exchange system. The team had observed that clients were unhappy about having to spend significant time and resources to prepare flat files with beneficiary details, which operations teams at the insurer would review and correct, placing further demands on clients. The planning committee granted the team enough funding to conduct user research, which confirmed that these error-prone file exchanges accounted for major lags in turnaround time. At the next quarterly planning session, the team presented its research outlined a concept for the file-exchange system, and requested funding to build an MVP. The planning committee fulfilled the team’s funding request, which enabled the team to spend the next quarter building the MVP.

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Enable teams instead of directing them.

Once the leaders of an agile organization have clearly articulated strategic priorities and conveyed them throughout the organization in the form of clear OKRs, they should concentrate on empowering teams and individuals to execute their plans for pursuing the OKRs. This often requires leaders to desist from telling teams what to do and how to do it, and instead allow teams to determine their own courses of action. Leaders then assist teams in carrying out their plans by providing them with adequate resources, as described above, and removing institutional obstacles.

One example of this leadership approach can be found at a North American software provider. While creating the previous version of an online banking platform, the company’s leadership had taken a highly directive approach. One year into the development process, though, the company discovered that the platform’s design, as specified by leadership, failed to take advantage of cloud-based technologies that would make the platform highly scalable.

When it came time to develop a new version of the platform, the company’s leaders restricted their role to defining the vision and providing guidance on which features to include. They then allowed the development team to figure out how best to build the platform. The developers chose to create an MVP by adapting a third-party banking platform that was based in the cloud. That approach proved more efficient, scalable, and technically reliable than coding from scratch—an instance where leadership’s deference to technical experts produced a superior result, with the MVP being released within five months (after previous delays of more than a year and a half).

For many executives, managers, and workers, organizational agility is already a high priority. Nevertheless, at some companies that are going through agile transformations, individual teams have been unable to fully implement agile ways of working because they are hamstrung by bureaucratic planning processes. To help these agile teams realize their potential, executives must integrate agile principles into their planning methods and systems. Stable, enterprise-wide strategic priorities provide the basis for the specific objectives and key results that teams are asked to work toward. With those priorities and objectives in mind, the planning group reviews budgets every quarter, rather than annually, so it can reallocate resources more often to teams that create the most value. Those teams, in turn, receive more authority to deploy funding in service of their objectives and more support from executives—thereby realizing the agility that is conducive to the organization’s success.

Santiago Comella-Dorda is a partner in McKinsey’s Boston office, Khushpreet Kaur is a partner in the New York office, and Ahmad Zaidi is an associate partner in the Chicago office.

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Comprehensive Guide to the Agile Manifesto

By Kate Eby | July 29, 2016

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In this article, you’ll find a brief synopsis of the Agile Manifesto. This easy-to-follow guide provides an overview of this approach, and uncovers its impact on the software development industry.

Included on this page, you’ll find the history of the Agile Manifesto , the four values of the Agile Manifesto , and the twelve Agile Manifesto principles .

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History of the Agile Manifesto

The Agile Manifesto and the Twelve Principles of Agile Software were the consequences of industry frustration in the 1990s. The enormous time lag between business requirements (the applications and features customers were requesting) and the delivery of technology that answered those needs, led to the cancelling of many projects. Business, requirements, and customer requisites changed during this lag time, and the final product did not meet the then current needs. The software development models of the day, led by the Waterfall model , were not meeting the demand for speed and did not take advantage of just how quickly software could be altered.

In 2000, a group of seventeen “thought leaders,” including Jon Kern , Kent Beck , Ward Cunningham , Arie van Bennekum , and Alistair Cockburn , met first at a resort in Oregon and later, in 2001, at The Lodge at Snowbird ski resort in Utah. It was at the second meeting where the Agile Manifesto and the Twelve Principles were formally written. The Manifesto reads:

“We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:

“Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan

“That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.”

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The Four Values of The Agile Manifesto

The Agile Manifesto is comprised of four foundational values and 12 supporting principles which lead the Agile approach to software development. Each Agile methodology applies the four values in different ways, but all of them rely on them to guide the development and delivery of high-quality, working software.

1. Individuals and Interactions Over Processes and Tools The first value in the Agile Manifesto is “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.” Valuing people more highly than processes or tools is easy to understand because it is the people who respond to business needs and drive the development process. If the process or the tools drive development, the team is less responsive to change and less likely to meet customer needs. Communication is an example of the difference between valuing individuals versus process. In the case of individuals, communication is fluid and happens when a need arises. In the case of process, communication is scheduled and requires specific content.

2. Working Software Over Comprehensive Documentation Historically, enormous amounts of time were spent on documenting the product for development and ultimate delivery. Technical specifications, technical requirements, technical prospectus, interface design documents, test plans, documentation plans, and approvals required for each. The list was extensive and was a cause for the long delays in development. Agile does not eliminate documentation, but it streamlines it in a form that gives the developer what is needed to do the work without getting bogged down in minutiae. Agile documents requirements as user stories, which are sufficient for a software developer to begin the task of building a new function. The Agile Manifesto values documentation, but it values working software more.

3. Customer Collaboration Over Contract Negotiation Negotiation is the period when the customer and the product manager work out the details of a delivery, with points along the way where the details may be renegotiated. Collaboration is a different creature entirely. With development models such as Waterfall, customers negotiate the requirements for the product, often in great detail, prior to any work starting. This meant the customer was involved in the process of development before development began and after it was completed, but not during the process. The Agile Manifesto describes a customer who is engaged and collaborates throughout the development process, making. This makes it far easier for development to meet their needs of the customer. Agile methods may include the customer at intervals for periodic demos, but a project could just as easily have an end-user as a daily part of the team and attending all meetings, ensuring the product meets the business needs of the customer.

4. Responding to Change Over Following a Plan Traditional software development regarded change as an expense, so it was to be avoided. The intention was to develop detailed, elaborate plans, with a defined set of features and with everything, generally, having as high a priority as everything else, and with a large number of many dependencies on delivering in a certain order so that the team can work on the next piece of the puzzle.

With Agile, the shortness of an iteration means priorities can be shifted from iteration to iteration and new features can be added into the next iteration. Agile’s view is that changes always improve a project; changes provide additional value.

Perhaps nothing illustrates Agile’s positive approach to change better than the concept of Method Tailoring, defined in An Agile Information Systems Development Method in use as: “A process or capability in which human agents determine a system development approach for a specific project situation through responsive changes in, and dynamic interplays between contexts, intentions, and method fragments.” Agile methodologies allow the Agile team to modify the process and make it fit the team rather than the other way around.

The Twelve Agile Manifesto Principles

The Twelve Principles are the guiding principles for the methodologies that are included under the title “The Agile Movement.” They describe a culture in which change is welcome, and the customer is the focus of the work. They also demonstrate the movement’s intent as described by Alistair Cockburn, one of the signatories to the Agile Manifesto, which is to bring development into alignment with business needs.

The twelve principles of agile development include:

• Customer satisfaction through early and continuous software delivery – Customers are happier when they receive working software at regular intervals, rather than waiting extended periods of time between releases.
• Accommodate changing requirements throughout the development process – The ability to avoid delays when a requirement or feature request changes.
• Frequent delivery of working software – Scrum accommodates this principle since the team operates in software sprints or iterations that ensure regular delivery of working software.
• Collaboration between the business stakeholders and developers throughout the project – Better decisions are made when the business and technical team are aligned.
• Support, trust, and motivate the people involved – Motivated teams are more likely to deliver their best work than unhappy teams.
• Enable face-to-face interactions – Communication is more successful when development teams are co-located.
• Working software is the primary measure of progress – Delivering functional software to the customer is the ultimate factor that measures progress.
• Agile processes to support a consistent development pace – Teams establish a repeatable and maintainable speed at which they can deliver working software, and they repeat it with each release.
• Attention to technical detail and design enhances agility – The right skills and good design ensures the team can maintain the pace, constantly improve the product, and sustain change.
• Simplicity – Develop just enough to get the job done for right now.
• Self-organizing teams encourage great architectures, requirements, and designs – Skilled and motivated team members who have decision-making power, take ownership, communicate regularly with other team members, and share ideas that deliver quality products.
• Regular reflections on how to become more effective – Self-improvement, process improvement, advancing skills, and techniques help team members work more efficiently.

The intention of Agile is to align development with business needs, and the success of Agile is apparent. Agile projects are customer focused and encourage customer guidance and participation. As a result, Agile has grown to be an overarching view of software development throughout the software industry and an industry all by itself.

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