What is Agile?

The idea of "Agile" seems instinctively obvious, and generally preferable to not-Agile for most of us, but what exactly is "Agile"?

At Cornwell, Agile is as much an attitude, or mindset, as a rigorous approach.  There are a lot Agile techniques, most of which we use, but using techniques doesn't make you Agile. Your agility shows in all those hundreds of decisions you make every day.  

We focus on a few key ideas, which seem more like common sense, than radical innovation, and maybe that's our core view of Agile:  do the sensible things, quickly and efficiently;  don't do what you don't need to do.  It sometimes seems like in the last decades, we have learned a lot of unhelpful behaviours, that just get in the way. So here are our Agile principles:

• Outcomes over route
• Direction over design
• Now over later
• Flexibility over certainty
• Incremental over completeness
• Iterative over decomposition
• Fixed time/cost over fixed requirement
• “Good enough” over perfection
• Empowerment over directives
• Human contact over digital dialogue 

We'll explain more about these principles soon, and about how they influence our work with clients.