Agile

Agile is a set of principles, not a single method. Popular frameworks such as Scrum and Kanban put those principles into practice with specific roles, meetings and boards. The traditional alternative, often called waterfall, plans everything up front and delivers in one go at the end.

Agile does not mean "no plan" or "no deadline". It means the plan is expected to change, so the team builds the most valuable parts first and shows them to you early.

How it works

Work is broken into user stories kept in a prioritised backlog. The team commits to a batch of them for a short period, usually a one- or two-week sprint, builds them, then shows the result in a review. The client gives feedback, the backlog is reordered and the next cycle begins.

Short daily check-ins keep the team aligned, and a retrospective at the end of each cycle looks at how the process itself can improve. The client, or a product owner on their behalf, is expected to be available to answer questions and make priority calls.

Kanban works differently from sprint-based Scrum. Instead of fixed cycles, work moves across a board with columns such as "to do", "in progress", "review" and "done", and the team limits how many items can sit in progress at once. That suits ongoing work like support and website maintenance, where requests arrive continuously rather than in planned batches. Agile contracts usually price time rather than a fixed list of features. A common shape is a monthly or per-sprint fee for a set team, with the backlog reprioritised at every review. Because the client can stop at the end of any cycle, the risk is spread out: if the product is not working, you find out after a few weeks and a modest spend, not after the full budget has gone.

Example

A clinic commissions a patient portal. Instead of waiting four months for the whole thing, the clinic sees a working login and appointment list after the second sprint. Staff try it and point out that patients care more about downloading invoices than editing their profile. The team swaps those priorities, and the feature that matters ships weeks earlier than a fixed plan would have allowed.

The clinic's manager attends a 30-minute review every two weeks and answers questions in a shared chat in between. When the budget is two-thirds spent, the remaining backlog is reordered so the most important features are guaranteed to ship, and two nice-to-have items are moved to a later phase.

Why it matters for your business

Agile reduces the risk of spending the whole budget on something that misses the mark, because you see and test real work early. The trade-off is that it needs your time: regular reviews and quick decisions. It also makes a fixed price harder, since the scope is meant to move. For a small, well-defined site, a simple fixed-scope project with a clear scope of work is often cheaper and simpler than a full agile process. You can tell whether a supplier is really working in an agile way by asking when you will first see working software: if the answer is "near the end", it is not.

Common mistakes

• Calling a project agile while skipping the reviews, so feedback still arrives only at the end.
• Expecting agile to deliver a fixed list of features by a fixed date for a fixed price, which removes the flexibility it depends on.
• Having no single person able to make priority decisions on the client side.
• Running the meetings without ever changing the plan based on what was learned.

Questions people ask

What is the difference between agile and waterfall?

Waterfall plans the entire project up front and delivers it in sequential stages, with the client seeing the result near the end. Agile delivers in short cycles, shows working pieces often and changes the plan as it learns. Many real projects mix the two.

Is Scrum the same as agile?

No. Agile is the overall approach and its principles. Scrum is one framework that applies them, with sprints, a product owner, a scrum master and set meetings. Kanban is another, built around a continuous flow of work rather than fixed cycles.

Can an agile project have a fixed budget?

Yes. A common arrangement fixes the budget and timeline and lets the scope flex, so the team builds the highest-priority items first and stops when the money or time runs out. What is hard is fixing budget, time and scope all at once.