Agile
Agile is an iterative software development philosophy formalized in the 2001 Agile Manifesto, emphasizing working software, customer collaboration, and responsiveness to change. It rejects rigid up-front planning, contract negotiation, and process compliance, implemented through frameworks like Scrum, Kanban, Extreme Programming (XP), and at large-organization scale, SAFe and LeSS. It is the dominant operating philosophy of modern software product teams and the most-misunderstood word in the discipline.
The Agile Manifesto, written in February 2001 by 17 software practitioners at a ski lodge in Snowbird, Utah, states four values: individuals and interactions over processes and tools; working software over comprehensive documentation; customer collaboration over contract negotiation; responding to change over following a plan. Crucially, the Manifesto explicitly says "while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more", which makes it a values statement, not a methodology. The 12 supporting principles cover frequent delivery, business-developer collaboration, sustainable pace, working software as the primary measure of progress, and continuous attention to technical excellence. The major frameworks that operationalize agile: Scrum (time-boxed sprints, defined roles, ceremonies), Kanban (work-in-progress limits, continuous flow, no fixed iterations), Extreme Programming / XP (engineering practices: pair programming, TDD, continuous integration), and at enterprise scale SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) and LeSS (Large-Scale Scrum). The most consistently uncomfortable truth about agile in 2025: a large segment of "agile" practice in industry is what Martin Fowler called "the agile industrial complex": certification mills, heavy ceremony, and rigid process that violates the original values. The Manifesto authors have publicly distanced themselves from much of this. Real agile is closer to "do less stuff, but make it actually work, and adjust often" than to "schedule 11 meetings to plan the sprint."
Ryan's Take
Agile got captured by the certifications industry the moment it became popular, and most of what gets called "agile" today is exactly what the original Manifesto authors were arguing against. If your "agile" requires a Certified Scrum Master, three weekly ceremonies, and a Jira workflow with seven custom statuses, you have built a process-heavy planning bureaucracy and slapped an Agile sticker on it. Real agile is small teams shipping working software in short cycles, talking to customers, and changing course when the evidence changes. That can be done without any certifications, often with no software tool more sophisticated than a shared doc, and almost always with fewer meetings than your team currently has. The framework is not the point. The values are the point.
What founders get wrong: Adopting a specific agile framework (usually Scrum, sometimes SAFe) and confusing the framework's ceremonies with actual agility. A team doing two-week sprints with daily standups and retros can still be deeply non-agile if they're not delivering working software, not collaborating with customers, and not changing course on the evidence. The framework is a vehicle for the values, not a substitute for them.
Related: Scrum · Kanban · Sprint · Product Management · Product Discovery
FAQ
What is agile?
An iterative software development philosophy formalized in the 2001 Agile Manifesto, emphasizing working software, customer collaboration, and responsiveness to change over rigid up-front planning, contract negotiation, and process compliance. Implemented through frameworks like Scrum, Kanban, and XP.
Who wrote the Agile Manifesto?
17 software practitioners at a ski lodge in Snowbird, Utah, in February 2001, including Kent Beck, Martin Fowler, Robert C. Martin, Ken Schwaber, Jeff Sutherland, and Ward Cunningham. The Manifesto states four values and 12 supporting principles and is published at agilemanifesto.org.
Is Scrum the same as agile?
No. Agile is a values-based philosophy; Scrum is one specific framework that implements agile values. Other agile frameworks include Kanban, Extreme Programming (XP), SAFe, and LeSS. A team can be agile without doing Scrum, and (more commonly) can do Scrum ceremonies without being agile.
Find this article helpful?
This is just a small sample! Register to unlock our in-depth courses, hundreds of video courses, and a library of playbooks and articles to grow your startup fast. Let us Let us show you!
Submission confirms agreement to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.