What is Agile Development

History

Agile Development is a rather recent name to a set of development approaches that arose in the mid-1990s as a reaction against “heavyweight” methods – indeed, they were originally called “lightweight”.

Agile development methodologies arose largely because of the misapplication of highly structured “waterfall” development approaches in a heavily regulated, regimented and micro-managed attempt to commoditise the process of software creation.  This was seen to be a major contributing factor in the failure of software projects and the significant reduction in productivity. 

A case can be made that agile and iterative development methods mark a return to development practice from early in the history of software development.

In 2001, 17 prominent figures in the field of agile development came together at the Snowbird ski resort in Utah to discuss ways of creating software in a lighter, faster, more people-centric way.  They coined the terms “Agile Software Development” and “agile methods”, and they created the Agile Manifesto, widely regarded as the canonical definition of agile development and accompanying agile principles.  Later, some of these people formed The Agile Alliance, a non-profit organisation that promotes agile development.

Principles

The functioning principles of Agile can be found in lean manufacturing and Six Sigma.  These concepts include error proofing, eliminating waste, creating flow, adding customer value, and empowering workers.

The concepts were first formally espoused in the 14 principles of the Toyota Way, the two pillars of the Toyota Production System (Just-in-time and smart automation), the 5S methodology, and Deming’s 14 points. These have been summarised in the seven points of lean software development.