What Is Agile?

Agile is an approach to building things that emphasizes iteration, feedback, and flexibility. Instead of planning everything upfront and executing a fixed plan, you work in short cycles, learn, and adapt.

The Core Idea

Traditional approach (Waterfall): 1. Spend months gathering all requirements 2. Spend months designing everything 3. Spend months building it 4. Launch and hope it works 5. Find out users want something different

Agile approach: 1. Build a small piece quickly 2. Put it in front of users 3. Learn what works and what doesn't 4. Repeat

The insight: you can't know everything upfront. Reality changes. Requirements evolve. Building in short cycles lets you adapt.

Key Principles

Individuals over processes. Focus on people and collaboration, not rigid procedures.

Working software over documentation. Ship things that work. Docs are secondary.

Customer collaboration over contracts. Work with stakeholders continuously, not just at the start.

Responding to change over following a plan. Plans are useful, but adapting is more important.

Agile Frameworks

Scrum - The most common framework. Work in sprints (usually 2 weeks). Defined roles (Product Owner, Scrum Master, Team). Daily standups. Sprint planning and retrospectives.

Kanban - Visualize work on a board. Limit work in progress. Focus on flow. Less prescribed than Scrum.

XP (Extreme Programming) - Engineering-focused. Pair programming, test-driven development, continuous integration.

Many teams use hybrid approaches - Scrum with Kanban boards, XP practices within Scrum, etc.

Agile for Data Teams

Data teams have adopted Agile too:

Analytics sprints. Two-week cycles to deliver specific analyses or dashboards.

Iterative modeling. Build a simple model first, refine with feedback.

Continuous delivery. dbt models deployed regularly, not in big releases.

Cross-functional collaboration. Data engineers, analysts, and stakeholders working together.

But it's not a perfect fit. Some data work (migrations, infrastructure) resists iteration. Adapt the approach.

Common Ceremonies

Sprint Planning - What will we accomplish this sprint? Pull from the backlog.

Daily Standup - Quick check-in. What did you do? What will you do? Any blockers?

Sprint Review - Demo what was built. Get stakeholder feedback.

Retrospective - How did the sprint go? What can we improve?

Keep ceremonies short and valuable. Long, boring meetings aren't Agile.

What Agile Is Not

No planning. Agile still requires planning. It's just shorter-term and adaptive.

No documentation. Documentation still matters. Just prioritize working software first.

Just standups. Doing daily standups doesn't make you Agile.

Moving fast and breaking things. Agile values sustainable pace and quality.

Cherry-picking practices. Using Agile jargon without embracing the mindset isn't Agile.

Signs of Fake Agile

• Sprints but no iteration (building the fixed plan in 2-week chunks)
• Stakeholders only involved at the end
• No retrospectives or learning
• "Agile" as an excuse to skip planning
• Metrics focused on output (story points) not outcomes
• Ceremonies with no purpose

Making Agile Work

Actual buy-in. Leadership must support the approach, not just the label.

Empowered teams. Teams need authority to make decisions.

Real stakeholder involvement. Not just at kickoff - throughout the process.

Focus on outcomes. What customer problem are we solving? Not just what features are we shipping.

Psychological safety. Retrospectives only work if people can speak honestly.

Sustainable pace. Constant sprinting leads to burnout. Agile isn't about going faster forever.

When Agile Fits

Uncertain requirements. You don't know exactly what to build. Discovery is needed.

Changing environment. Market moves fast. Flexibility is valuable.

Complex problems. Solutions emerge through iteration, not upfront design.

Empowered teams. People have authority and trust to make decisions.

When to Adapt

Regulated industries. Some documentation and planning is non-negotiable.

Fixed scope/budget. When constraints are truly fixed, pure Agile is harder.

Large-scale coordination. Multiple teams need some upfront alignment.

Maintenance work. Not everything fits neatly into sprints.

Be pragmatic. Agile is a tool, not a religion.

Agile is one way to work. Learn about why projects take longer than expected and change management for transformations.

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Sources: - Agile Manifesto - Atlassian: What Is Agile? - HBR: Embracing Agile