---
name: agile-principles
description: Use when asked what the Agile principles are, to check a team practice or process decision against them, or to explain the reasoning behind agile software delivery (as opposed to a specific framework like Scrum or Kanban, which implement these principles rather than being identical to them).
---

# Agile Principles

These are the 12 principles behind the Agile Manifesto, quoted verbatim from
[agilemanifesto.org/principles.html](https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html).
They are the reasoning underneath any specific agile framework (Scrum,
Kanban, XP, …) — a framework is one way to operationalize these principles,
not a substitute for them, and a team can follow a framework's ceremonies
exactly while violating the principles it's meant to serve.

## The 12 principles

1. "Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and
   continuous delivery of valuable software."
2. "Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes
   harness change for the customer's competitive advantage."
3. "Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple
   of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale."
4. "Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the
   project."
5. "Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment
   and support they need, and trust them to get the job done."
6. "The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and
   within a development team is face-to-face conversation."
7. "Working software is the primary measure of progress."
8. "Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors,
   developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace
   indefinitely."
9. "Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances
   agility."
10. "Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is
    essential."
11. "The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from
    self-organizing teams."
12. "At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more
    effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly."

## Reading them as a group, not a checklist

- **1, 3, 7** are about the delivery cadence and what actually counts as
  progress: real, working software shipped frequently — not a document, a
  demo of a mock, or a percentage-complete estimate.
- **2** is about welcoming change rather than merely tolerating it — a
  process that treats a changed requirement as a problem to be managed
  hasn't adopted this principle even if it calls its iterations "sprints."
- **4, 6** are about communication bandwidth — daily business/developer
  contact and face-to-face conversation are given as the *most* efficient
  channel, which is a claim about information loss in written specs and
  async-only communication, not a preference for meetings for their own
  sake.
- **5, 11** are about where good decisions actually come from — trusted,
  self-organizing individuals and teams, not a plan imposed from outside
  the people doing the work.
- **8** is about pace, explicitly framed as *sustainable* and *indefinite* —
  a process that only works via a crunch before each release is violating
  this one regardless of its ceremonies.
- **9, 10** are about the internal quality of the work: technical
  excellence and deliberately maximizing work *not* done (a definition of
  simplicity worth restating precisely — it's about doing less, not about
  making the remaining work simple).
- **12** is the improvement loop — regular reflection that actually changes
  behavior, not a retrospective that produces a list nobody revisits.

## Using this to evaluate a practice or process

When someone asks whether a specific practice is "agile," the useful
question is which of these 12 it serves (or undermines) — not whether it
matches a named framework's standard ceremony list. A daily standup that
becomes status-reporting-to-a-manager, for instance, technically follows a
common framework's ritual while working against principle 4 (business
people and developers working together) and principle 6 (conversation as
information exchange, not surveillance).

## Learn more

- [The 12 principles (source for this skill)](https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html)
- [The Agile Manifesto itself (the four values)](https://agilemanifesto.org/) — the shorter statement these 12 principles elaborate on.