principles for Agile development practices. The following
12 principles are the core of the Agile Manifesto:
Customer satisfaction is provided through early and continuous
delivery of valuable software.
Changing requirements, even in late development, are welcome.
Working software is delivered frequently (in weeks rather than
months).
The process depends on close, daily cooperation between business
stakeholders and developers.
Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted.
Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication (co-
location).
Working software is the principal measure of progress.
Sustainable development requires being able to maintain a constant
pace.
Continuous attention is paid to technical excellence and good design.
Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done—is
essential.
The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-
organizing teams.
A team regularly reflects on how to become more effective and adjusts
accordingly.These core tenets were the main spark of the Agile
movement. Mary Poppendieck and Tom Poppendieck
wrote Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit in
2003, based on the principles of the Agile Manifesto and
their many years of experience developing software. This
book is still considered one of the best on the practical
uses of Agile.
Developing software through Agile results in very
different output than the slow serial manner used with
Waterfall. With Waterfall, a project is not “finished” and
deployable until the very end. With Agile, the time frame
is changed: Agile uses smaller time increments (often 2
weeks), or “sprints,” that encompass the full process of
analysis, design, code, and test but on a much smaller
aspect of an application. The goal is to finish a feature or
capability for each sprint, resulting in a potentially