What is Agile methodology?

The Agile methodology is a collection of project management frameworks that break projects down into smaller phases. Agile relies on iterative cycles, allowing teams to adapt to changes and regularly refine their work.

In this article, we share everything you need to know about Agile methodologies, Agile project management, Agile methodology frameworks, and how to implement them in your team. We’ll also share our Agile teamwork template to get started with Agile even faster.

Agile methodologies overview

The Agile Manifesto for Software Development put forth a groundbreaking mindset on delivering value and collaborating with customers when it was created in 2001. But how do teams apply this in real-world projects? The four Agile values lay the foundation, emphasizing collaboration, flexibility, and delivering results. The 12 Agile principles take it further, offering a roadmap for teams to stay efficient, customer-focused, and ready to adapt.

Agile’s four main values are:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools: While tools and processes help teams stay organized, Agile project methodology prioritizes open discussions, problem solving, and teamwork.
Working software over comprehensive documentation: Traditional project management often requires teams to create detailed documents before work begins. While documentation can be helpful, the Agile method focuses on delivering value to your customers. Instead of spending months writing detailed reports, Agile teams build, test, and improve their product continuously.
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation: Instead of locking everything into a contract upfront, Agile encourages ongoing conversations with customers throughout the project. This means the team can adjust their work based on customer needs rather than being restricted by rigid agreements.
Responding to change over following a plan: Traditional project management follows a set plan from start to finish, which can make it difficult to adapt when new information comes in. Agile recognizes that customer needs evolve, market conditions shift, and better ideas emerge along the way.

Understanding the 12 Agile principles

The 12 Agile principles guide teams on how to work more flexibly and respond quickly to changes, which is key in project management. Here’s an overview of the 12 Agile principles:

Make customers happy through early and continuous delivery of useful software: Customers don’t care about your internal processes — they just want a product that works. Traditional methods make them wait months (or even years) for a finished product. Agile flips that by delivering small, usable updates early and often.
Embrace changing requirements, even in later stages: If you’re afraid of change, Agile isn’t for you. Some teams try to fight evolving requirements, but customer needs change. Agile embraces that instead of resisting it.
Deliver work frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference for the shorter timescale: Some teams spend months planning before they write a single line of code. That’s a mistake. Agile cross-functional teams break projects into short cycles (usually two to four weeks) and release something usable at the end of each one.
Stakeholders and developers must work together daily throughout the project: One of the biggest reasons projects fail is due to lack of communication. Too often, business teams and developers operate in silos, leading to misunderstandings and last-minute chaos. Agile fixes this by ensuring daily collaboration between everyone involved.
Build projects around motivated individuals, giving them the environment and support they need, and trusting them to get the job done: Some leaders think strict oversight ensures productivity, but in reality, micromanagement slows teams down. The best Agile teams are made up of motivated, self-driven people who take ownership of their work.
Face-to-face conversations are the most effective method of communication: Want a faster way to solve a problem? Talk about it. When teams rely too much on emails and messages, misunderstandings pile up. Agile teams prioritize face-to-face conversations because they strengthen team cohesion.
The main measure of progress is working software: If the product doesn’t work, nothing else matters. Agile teams focus on delivering functional software, not just plans and projections.
The working pace should be constant yet sustainable: Working at full speed all the time isn’t sustainable. Burnout leads to mistakes, missed deadlines, and high turnover. Agile teams pace themselves so they can deliver consistently without exhausting their people.
Pay continuous attention to technical excellence and good design: Rushing to meet deadlines often leads to unmaintainable code. Agile teams don’t sacrifice quality for speed. They ensure that what they build is reliable, scalable, and well-designed.
Keep things as simple as possible: Complexity kills progress. The more complicated your processes, the slower your team moves. Agile teams strip everything down to the essentials.
The best results come from self-organizing teams: The most effective teams organize themselves, distribute work, solve problems, and make decisions without waiting for approval.
The team reflects on how to become more effective at regular intervals, adjusting behavior accordingly: If you’re not improving, you’re falling behind. Agile teams constantly evaluate what’s working and what isn’t and then make adjustments.

To learn more about each principle and tips on applying them, check out our full guide on the 12 Agile principles. This guide will help you understand how to use these principles to run projects more smoothly and effectively.

Need a quick summary? Watch this video to see how teams use Agile to stay flexible and deliver results faster.

What is Agile project management?

Agile project management is a process for managing a project that involves constant collaboration and working in iterations. It works off the basis that a project can be continuously improved upon throughout its lifecycle and adapt to changes quickly.

What are the benefits of Agile methodology?

Agile is one of the most popular approaches to project management because it is flexible, it is adaptable to changes, and it encourages customer feedback.

Many teams embrace this approach to achieve the following benefits of Agile:

Rapid progress: By effectively reducing the time it takes to complete various stages of a project, teams can elicit feedback in real time and produce working prototypes or demos throughout the process
Customer and stakeholder alignment: Through focusing on customer concerns and stakeholder feedback, the Agile team is well positioned to produce results that satisfy the right people
Continuous improvement: As an iterative approach, the Agile project management methodology allows teams to chip away at tasks until they reach the best end result

What are the disadvantages of Agile methodology?

Is Agile always the best choice? Not necessarily. While it offers flexibility, it also comes with some challenges that teams need to manage. Here are some of the most common drawbacks of Agile frameworks and how they can impact projects:

Less predictability in scope and timeline

Since Agile embraces change, projects don’t always have a fixed timeline or scope. This can create challenges such as:

Difficulty in estimating deadlines and final costs
Constant scope changes leading to scope creep
Uncertainty for stakeholders who prefer a fixed plan

Requires high commitment from stakeholders

Agile works best when everyone is actively engaged. This can lead to:

Burnout from daily standups and sprint reviews
Overloaded stakeholders who struggle to stay involved
Decision fatigue due to constant iterations and refinements

Risk of losing focus

Traditional methods like Waterfall rely heavily on documentation, but Agile prioritizes working solutions over lengthy reports. While this speeds up development, it can create issues when key project details are undocumented and lost over time.

You can read more about the six stages of the Agile lifecycle in our Agile guide.

See below an example from Wrike’s Agile project management dashboard from our Agile teamwork template.

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Types of Agile methodologies

Agile project management is not a singular framework but an umbrella term that includes a wide range of methodologies, including Scrum, Kanban, Extreme Programming (XP), and the Adaptive Project Framework (APF).

Scrum

It is ideal for projects with rapidly changing requirements, using short sprints. Each sprint delivers a working product increment, allowing teams to iterate quickly and incorporate feedback.

Key aspects of Scrum include:

Defined roles
Daily standup meetings
Sprint planning & retrospectives
A prioritized product backlog

Scrum is best for teams that need structure and predictability while still being able to adapt quickly.

Kanban

It visualizes project progress and is great for tasks requiring steady output. Unlike Scrum’s fixed-length sprints, Kanban is a flow-based system that helps teams visualize work in progress and limit bottlenecks. I’ve seen teams struggle when they try to force rigid timelines onto complex projects.

Take MTD, a global leader in lawn and garden power equipment with brands like Cub Cadet, Troy-Bilt, and Rover. When they introduced a new autonomous product development division, they realized their traditional project management tools weren’t cutting it.

They tested Microsoft Project, Outlook, SharePoint, Smartsheet, Trello, and Workfront, but none of them offered the flexibility, real-time collaboration, and visibility they needed.

Lean

It streamlines processes, eliminating waste for customer value. Lean takes inspiration from Lean manufacturing principles, originally developed by Toyota, and applies them to software development and business operations.

Key Lean principles include:

Eliminating anything that doesn’t add value
Faster feedback loops
Empowering the team
Uncovering better ways of developing value

Lean is great for startups that want to optimize their processes and deliver more with fewer resources.

Extreme Programming (XP)

Extreme Programming (XP) is a specialized Agile methodology designed specifically for software development teams that need to improve code quality, collaboration, and responsiveness to customer demands.

Adaptive Project Framework (APF)

Not every project has clearly defined goals from the start. Some projects require a flexible approach. APF works well for projects with unclear details, as it adapts to constantly evolving client needs.

Agile methodologies vs. traditional approaches

So, how do these Agile methodologies compare to traditional approaches to project management? Let’s highlight the Waterfall approach as an example.

When working with this traditional methodology, teams would follow a strictly linear sequence: requirements gathering, design, build, test, deliver. They are required to complete one phase before moving on to the next one. Changes are difficult to incorporate once a stage is completed and customer interactions are limited. As a result, Waterfall suits projects with fixed guidelines and minimal changes.

By comparison, Agile methodologies are far more fluid in nature. Every Agile framework emphasizes a degree of adaptability, breaking projects into phases and embracing changing requirements. Through iterations and incremental efforts, they incorporate collaboration and customer feedback, leading to continuous improvement.

Agile in software development

Agile enables software development teams to stay adaptable.

With an iterative and adaptive approach, the aim is to produce the highest-quality software product that puts the customer at the heart of the process. By prioritizing flexibility, Agile teams can quickly react to changes, deliver products faster, and thrive in a collaborative environment.

By building Agile teams with the right qualities — such as self-organization and effective collaboration — you can accelerate the software development process while leaving space for vital customer feedback.

One of the most compelling reasons to adopt the Agile approach in software development is the dynamic workflows and work systems that contribute to a better end product. By listening to customer feedback and carrying out several iterations and rounds of software testing, you can iron out any kinks along the way and build the best possible software.

The Agile software development lifecycle helps you break down each project you take on into six simple stages:

Concept: Define the project scope and priorities
Inception: Build the Agile team according to project requirements
Iteration: Create code factoring in customer feedback
Release: Test the code and troubleshoot any issues
Maintenance: Provide ongoing tech support to ensure the product remains serviceable
Retirement: The end of the product lifespan, which often coincides with the beginning of a new one

Agile methodology in non-software projects

While many think of the Agile methodology as a solution primarily for the software industry, its applications extend far beyond.

Here are some examples of Agile practices in action in various project types:

Marketing campaigns

Marketing is fast-paced, unpredictable, and constantly evolving. By bringing together designers, marketers, writers, and colleagues from other departments, you can build a cross-functional team ready to tackle marketing campaigns. Using sprints and a task backlog, you can identify the highest-priority tasks and streamline the execution.

Capgemini, one of the world’s largest consulting firms, experienced this firsthand. Its marketing services team struggled with scattered workflows, unclear task assignments, and limited visibility into active projects.

It relied on informal request methods like emails, phone calls, and in-person discussions, leading to confusion and delays.

When it implemented Wrike, everything changed. Instead of handling individual workflows, their team streamlined request submissions, created clear project milestones, and improved workload visibility.

“I think it’s amazing to be able to have a tool that helps us collaborate, and to be surrounded by people that have the same vision and really want to get everything done, and done beautifully” – Dan Stevens, Director of Marketing Services, Capgemini

Product development

As you might imagine, since Agile methodology works for virtual products, it can work just as well for physical products. This time, though, instead of troubleshooting code, you’ll be diagnosing and fixing prototypes.

Generally, to get the best out of any of the Agile methodologies for non-software projects, you should always aim to keep the customer in mind. Just as Agile development must factor in the end user, non-software use cases benefit from a customer-focused approach.

By integrating the customer and their feedback in everything you do, you can better organize your priorities and plan your phases. It’s also a good idea to evaluate whether you need a systematic approach to tackling major projects or an easy-to-follow visual workflow for a series of smaller projects, as this can influence which framework is best for your team.

With Wrike’s Agile template, you can kick-start your product development in no time.

How to implement Agile methodology into projects

If you’re wondering how to apply these theoretical frameworks to your team’s workflows, here’s a step-by-step guide for Agile methodology process implementation:

1. Choose the right Agile framework

Your first priority is to select the right Agile framework for your team.

Here’s a reminder of some of the most popular options:

Scrum: Principle-based project management
Kanban: Visual workflows and processes
Scrumban: Hybrid of Scrum and Kanban
XP: Customer-focused product development
APF: Versatile teamwork
Dynamic systems development method (DSDM): Focused on the software development lifecycle

When selecting an Agile framework, consider the size of your team, the specific project requirements, and the level of experience your team has with the various methodologies.

The more you know about your team and the projects you handle on a regular basis, the easier it will be for you to pick the right framework every time.

2. Assemble your Agile team

An Agile team isn’t like any ordinary team.

If you want to find success with any of the Agile methodologies, you need to build a team with clear roles and responsibilities and a culture of collaboration.

What are some of the responsibilities of an Agile team?

Self-organization: One of the cornerstones of an Agile team is the ability to self-organize. In Agile project management, the onus is on individual team members and teams to take initiative and organize themselves in a way that will lead to the highest output.
Cross-functional collaboration: Going hand in hand with the need for self-organization is the Agile demand for cross-functional collaboration. Agile teams have to relay information across departments and be able to work closely with a range of colleagues.
Iteration planning: Specific to Agile project management, iteration planning requires team members to outline the scope of individual sprints according to the product backlog.

3. Plan the project

Now that you’ve selected one of the Agile methods and assembled your A-team, it’s time to plan out your project.

Meticulous planning is one of the secret ingredients of successful Agile project management.

From the outset, you need to spend time clearly defining your project goals and scope. This will prevent unexpected setbacks and allow you to break down each portion of the project into manageable sprints (if you’re using Scrum).

You might also draw up a product backlog during the planning phase, which is most common in software development projects. The product backlog allows you to assign a priority level to your tasks, so everyone on the team knows what they should focus on.

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4. Manage stakeholder expectations

Before you get your project underway, it’s important to check in with any key stakeholders to make sure you factor in their feedback.

Depending on the level of their involvement, your project stakeholders may then want to be kept in the loop throughout the process or at least receive regular updates. Creating feedback loops eases any uncertainty on the stakeholder end and allows you to stay open to change should it be necessary at any stage of the process.

5. Measure success

Measuring project success is key to making meaningful progress with your Agile methodology of choice.

By paying attention to what worked and what didn’t during the project management process, you can extract key lessons to apply to future Agile projects.

There are various ways to effectively track progress and measure success with Agile projects:

Daily standups: Brief meetings to discuss obstacles and find solutions
Sprint reviews: Informal sit-down meetings to present work and solicit team feedback
Retrospectives: Reflections on past work to inspire and influence future progress

You should also introduce key performance indicators (KPIs) before embarking on any new major project, as getting specific will help you establish milestones and measure progress.

Implement Agile processes with Wrike

Now, you’re probably ready to start using Agile in project management following the steps we’ve shared. Wrike’s work management platform can support your team with resources to manage sprints, backlogs, and more.

Our Agile teamwork template will help you set up your processes and launch your first project with Agile. Once you’re underway, you can use Agile Kanban boards to manage your team’s workflows, visualizing progress and simplifying the process of assigning and completing tasks.

You can also use Wrike to oversee progress across your different departments with cross-tagging and project dashboards that update to reflect changes in real time.

Artem Gurnov

Artem is a Director of Account Development at Wrike. He previously held the role of Project Manager, overseeing a team of customer success managers (CSMs). Over the years of building teams and scaling business processes, he has successfully deployed multiple projects, from automating client outreach to setting up work prioritization tools for sales reps and CSMs.

#project management #agile methodology #agile manifesto #adaptive project framework

What Is Agile Methodology in Project Management?