Hey there. In the last video, I introduced the Agile Manifesto and the four values of Agile. Next, I'm going to tell you about the 12 principles of Agile. These principles reinforce the message of the four values and provide some additional clarity. There's definitely a benefit in studying each of these independently, and I've provided supplemental resources for you to study on your own. For this course, I've grouped the 12 principles into four themes. These are different from the four values. The four themes of the Agile principles are: Value delivery, or how do Agile teams deliver highly valuable products to their customers? Business collaboration, or how do Agile teams collaborate with their business partners and stakeholders to create business value to the organization and their users? Team culture, or how does a team create and maintain the right interpersonal and team dynamics to deliver value for the customers and the business? And retrospectives, or how does the project learn to continuously increase performance of an organization and business? As I said, I've grouped each of the 12 principles under these themes so they're easier to learn and remember. Let's dive in. The first theme is value delivery and includes five principals. Take a few seconds to review them. This theme is about delivering the work as quickly as possible. And remember why? So that we can get feedback and mitigate the risk that we spend too much time building the wrong thing. Also, no one gets any value from your work, including your company, until you deliver it. So the longer you take to deliver, the longer you wait to get revenue, and maybe the more time the competition has to get ahead of you. These may look very software-oriented, but if you replace the word "software" with "deliverables" or "solutions," these can apply to almost any project. For example: deliver working solutions frequently. See? The value theme is also about simplicity. How much time do you think it takes engineers to add all the buttons and features to products that ultimately end up confusing the user? Simplicity allows a team to focus and work on the things that matter the most. An example of this theme in action might be prioritizing getting feedback on a product prototype so you know which features really matter, or it might mean ensuring the team only works on approved features and doesn't spend time on unnecessary ones. Another example might be reserving ten percent of the team's time to work on bug fixing or polishing a process, which should help you go faster in future iterations. The next theme is business collaboration and includes two more principles. Quick note: one of the principles uses the term "business people" to refer to those involved with things like sales, marketing, customer support, and account management. We'll use the term "developers" to refer to those who are involved with making and creating products. Ok, so we discussed customer collaboration during the values discussion, and here we are again. Collaborating with your customers helps the team get critical business information immediately by allowing them to adjust and adapt to any new information instantly. No matter if it's realized early or late in the project, customers will get what they want to achieve their business goals. You can achieve collaboration by making sure that business people work near the development team, ideally in the same office or virtual space. If that's not possible, maybe co-locating a day a week, encouraging instant messaging, or blocking off time on your team calendars each day or week to collaborate. The goal is to enable easy access between business people and developers. Another example might be how you handle feedback and changes in priorities. Rather than trying to keep the customer away from developers due to concerns about scope creep, create a weekly huddle where customers and business people can explore feedback and new ideas with the team. This could be a great way to discover that one really valuable feature is super easy to build, whereas another feature the users thought would be easy is actually really hard. Our third theme is team dynamics and culture and includes four more principles. Remember, the first Agile value stresses individuals and interactions over processes and tools. Notice that the principles in this theme reflect that value. This theme emphasizes creating an effective team culture that is inclusive, supportive, and empowering. Having an effective team culture is essential to a project's success. These principles really boil down to making sure your team is motivated to do the right thing, feels trusted to do the right thing, has the resources and space to work closely together on their goals, and works at a sustainable pace. An example of emphasizing effective team culture would be to ask the team what kind of equipment they need to do their job and then giving them those tools. Another manifestation of this theme is letting teams write their own processes and templates rather than forcing them to use something from headquarters. Teams work best when they feel like their input is valued, so you, as the project manager, should make space for your team to engage and actively contribute to the team culture. You'll build trust and empower them to approach their work in a way that suits them best, which in turn will allow them to work more productively. Finally, the fourth theme is retrospectives and continuous learning. The last principle stands alone in this theme, so I'll read it aloud. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly. This one sits on its own because I want to draw attention to how important it is for Agile teams to continuously learn and adapt to what's working and what's not working for them. Teams should always be figuring out better ways to work, and it's really valuable to set this time aside after each iteration, to focus entirely on how to improve. In these sessions, the team can step back and consider questions like: How is the team doing? Are the customers happy? Are there processes we could optimize? Are our tools working for us? Are we following the values? Are we accumulating any debt? And by "debt" I mean processes or technology that slows us down. We've officially finished discussing the Agile Manifesto. It's amazing to think that these four values and 12 principles are the foundations of so many advances in project management. I'll come back to these values and principles throughout the rest of this course to demonstrate how these connect to the day-to-day activities of an Agile project. In the next video, we'll explore what types of industries benefit the most from an Agile approach.
