Agile Project Management QuickStart Guide

| 2 | Basic Strategy
In This Chapter
Distinctions Between Agile & Waterfall
Comparative 5-Step Processes That Define Agile & Waterfall
Agile’s Application of Flexibility as a Response to Unpredictability
Agile (adj.): Able to move quickly and easily
General Outline
Agile Project Management, as the name suggests, is a rapid and highly responsive method of process management. Its leading proponent, Jim Highsmith, has written that it enables a much faster, more flexible response to changing market circumstances and the sudden, unexpected tactics of competitors.3 That is, essentially, how it has come to have the adjective as its official name—due to the supposedly malleable and reflexive nature of the processes to which it is applied.

what the customer wants and then planning how to provide it, which happens during the Executing stage. Agile, on the other hand, uses the looser terms of Envisioning and Speculating to describe the first two stages, and then Exploring to refer to the actual implementation of the plan. This is because in Agile, the execution of that specific increment does not represent the sole or entire execution phase of the project and, generally, the project is not subject to a fixed product description.

The Initiating and Planning stages in the traditional Waterfall process involve identifying

Individuals & Interactions over Processes & Tools

Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation

Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation

Responding to Change over Following a Plan

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