Many things in the world are changing more rapidly than ever and levels of global competition have increased dramatically. Clients do not always know what they want in a new system or product and younger workers chafe at old command and control restrictions. These pressures and many others have challenges traditional project management methods. What has emerged is an understanding that for some projects, a new approach is needed. Many people have worked hard and imaginatively developing new approaches. Many of these fall under a broad umbrella called Agile. One difficulty with Agile is that various approaches have been developed and are in use today, both in “pure” form as suggested by their approach and in hybrid form attempting to gain advantages of more than a single approach. Not only that, but the very language of some of the approaches describe the same things differently and sometimes describe not so similar things in a similar manner. Add to that, many successful, experienced project practitioners do not fully understand nor value Agile.

We recognize that to capitalize fully on the benefits of Agile, one must first understand the concepts that underpin it. Only then will using the mechanics of Agile yield the sweeping benefits some organizations enjoy. In this book, we first identify the many concepts that various approaches advocate for Agile and group them into a simple, but not dumbed-down system. Then we identify the most common and most useful Agile methods regardless of the approach that promotes them, grouping them logically, and showing how to use them.

The result is we have an agnostic Agile model that can be useful to anyone who is either using or considering Agile. Further, the concepts and tools of this book can also be useful to anyone who is in an organization that is using a hybrid project management approach (part Agile and part traditional). Many, if not most, of the mindset concepts can also be of great value for people performing projects in a traditional manner as they attempt to unleash the energy and creativity of their project team members. Both concepts for being Agile and tools for doing Agile are summarized into an easy to follow system.