What does it mean to “be agile”?

The answer is more complicated than you might think. Agile development isn’t a specific process you can follow. No team practices the Agile method. There’s no such thing.

Agile development is a philosophy. It’s a way of thinking about software development. The canonical description of this way of thinking is the Agile Manifesto, a collection of 4 values (Figure 2-1) and 12 principles (Figure 2-2).

To “be agile,” you need to put the agile values and principles into practice.

Figure 2-1. Agile values