What are we arguing about? A framework for defining agile in our organization

How do we implement agile? Is agile a good thing for my organization? What barriers will have to overcome? All of these are important questions when deciding whether and how to apply agile software development to an organization that is used to working in a different way. To enable a good discussion, the language of that discussion must be established. As Medtronic adopted agile, we realized how important it was to put effort into the language. We established a framework for that language, organizing our thoughts into three areas: principles, practices, and benefits. When talking with visionaries or evangelists, we speak in terms of principles to understand why agile is the way it is. With practitioners or pragmatists, we speak in terms of practices to understand how to do agile. With skeptics, we speak in terms of benefits to determine whether agile is a good thing for us. In most cases, an effective conversation needs to address all three perspectives. The framework and language help us determine whether issues are related simply to communication barriers, or are related to the decisions of whether and how to apply agile to our world.