💨What is Agile?

This page goes over the basics of the Agile philosophy.

What's Agile?

Agile is a philosophy of how things get built and produced. Teams are expected to operate flexibly and talk things out by interacting with each other to decide.

There are two ways of working:

1. Waterfall - "the phased approach to work". With this approach, you do your work in sequential phases. First you do requirements, then you do research, then you do design, then you test, then you develop, then you launch. Teams don't return to prior phases when working in Waterfall. They define everything up front and deliver what they agree to up front. Waterfall is very risky when building products. The needs of the world shift and change constantly. Teams who operate waterfall are not getting the feedback they need from users until they deliver. Sometimes, products that get delivered into the world without validation fail because the team did not validate as they went.

2. Agile - "the iterative approach to work". With this approach, you may do work in parallel, and you focus on quick delivery of usable things that users can test in the world. You validate directions you think you're heading as you work, and you don't figure out everything up front; rather, you talk with customers and users to figure out how you should deliver your needs into the world. Agile is a philosophy and a mindset in how we work, and when value gets delivered. With Agile, value is delivered on the way. With waterfall, value is delivered at the end.

The Agile Manifesto

The Agile Manifesto shows the principles that teams follow with Agile.

Courtesy of agilemanifesto.org

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

1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

2. Working software over comprehensive documentation

3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

4. 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.

Agile Manifesto at agilemanifesto.org

Check out Tech Fleet's Agile 101 discussion to learn the basics of Agile

Agile is a philosophy and a way of life! It guides the ways we deliver value to customers and users.

Presentation was written by the Tech Fleet Leadership Guild for training on community projects and acts as the officlal training material for newcomers in Tech Fleet programs.

Agile Product Milestones

Check out the Tech Fleet Product Milestones Workbook to see details about how products are developed through Agile.

🪄Product Milestone Workbook

Agile Work in Tech Fleet

All Tech Fleet programs coach Agile, and use the Scrum method. Project teams operate in one or two-week teams, as decided by the teams who are on the project. All teams have meeting schedules that align with Scrum:

1. Sprint planning

2. Sprint retro

3. Standups

4. Sprint working sessions

5. Sprint demo

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