Agility is responsiveness to change: An essential definition
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There is some ambiguity of what agile means in both research and practice. Authors have suggested a diversity of different definitions, and many practitioners have their own idea of what it is. It is, therefore, difficult to interpret what agile really is. The concept, however, exists in its implementation through agile practices. In this paper, we draw on our experience from several agile transformations and argue that adopting an agile approach boils down to being responsive to change. That is the core purpose of any agile transformation. To support this claim, we relate agile principles, practices, and the agile manifesto to this core definition. Drawing on our practices of organizational changes in software companies, we also show that many misunderstandings about agility can be avoided through this definition. That, in turn, increases the likelihood of successful agile transformations.
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