Agile manifesto
Definition
The Agile Manifesto is a document published in February 2001 by seventeen software practitioners that established four core values and twelve guiding principles for a more effective, human-centered approach to software development.
The Agile Manifesto was written at a ski resort in Snowbird, Utah over two days by seventeen practitioners who represented different lightweight software methodologies of the time — Scrum, Extreme Programming, DSDM, Adaptive Software Development, Crystal, Feature-Driven Development, and Pragmatic Programming.
The group disagreed on many specifics but agreed on the underlying values. Kent Beck, Mike Beedle, Arie van Bennekum, Alistair Cockburn, Ward Cunningham, Martin Fowler, James Grenning, Jim Highsmith, Andrew Hunt, Ron Jeffries, Jon Kern, Brian Marick, Robert C. Martin, Steve Mellor, Ken Schwaber, Jeff Sutherland, and Dave Thomas signed it.
The 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
The twelve principles (condensed):
- Deliver working software frequently
- Welcome changing requirements, even late in development
- Business people and developers work together daily
- Build projects around motivated individuals — trust them
- Face-to-face conversation is the most efficient communication
- Working software is the primary measure of progress
- Sustainable pace — agile promotes this indefinitely
- Continuous attention to technical excellence
- Simplicity (maximizing work not done) is essential
- Best architectures emerge from self-organizing teams
- Regular reflection and adjustment
The Manifesto is remarkably short — fewer than 200 words for the values and principles combined. Its influence on software development over the past 25 years has been enormous.
Examples
- Team adopts the Manifesto's principle of 'working software over documentation' — stops writing 60-page specs and starts with prototypes
- Manager quotes 'responding to change over following a plan' when justifying a mid-sprint pivot to the team
- Retrospective action item: improve customer collaboration by scheduling bi-weekly user interviews rather than annual research sprints
- Team discusses 'sustainable pace' after two consecutive crunch sprints leave engineers burned out
- New hire reads the Manifesto on day one as part of engineering onboarding
Related terms
Snap a agile manifesto. Ship its actions.
BoardSnap turns any whiteboard — including this one — into a summary and action plan.