What is Agile?
Agile is a set of practices derived from the Agile Manifesto intended to improve the effectiveness of software development professionals, teams, and organizations. Agile should be understood in the context of the time that it was a response to, organisations had become bogged down in complex bureaucracies that slowed the flow of work and mistrusted innovation. Agile therefore focused on;
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan
but not as a finite solution to the issue of the day, but as discovery, by uncovering better ways to do things. Agile is not a static solution to the problems of the day but a redirection of effort, towards a continuous evolution in ways of working, thinking and valuing people and the work they do.
Where is Agile Going?
While Agile started in Software development it is now used everywhere for everything.
“Agile affords the opportunity for anyone to take control of their lives and circumstance by visualization of the current reality and to plan and communicate how they will move through their circumstances into a new reality of life” Karl Smith, 2011.
Agile has for a number of years consumed various methods and practices, it has shattered into various flavors many focused on enterprise working. Agile World is not involved in propagating any one flavour of agile but is rather focused on Practical Agile and how it can help people.
Agile World has 9 main initiatives that fall into four categories;
- Education through Entertainment
- Education through Self-study
- Free Resources for Educators and Educational Institutions
- Expand the Thinking around Agile