Agile

What it actually asks of you

Four things, and none of them are a ceremony. Deliver something usable often enough to get real feedback. Let what you learn change the plan. Keep the people doing the work close to the people who want it. And prefer a conversation to a handover document. Everything else - the stand-ups, the boards, the point estimates - are tools some teams use to get there, not the thing itself.

Agile does not mean no documentation

This is the most expensive misreading of it. The Agile Manifesto says working software over comprehensive documentation, which is a statement about priority when the two compete, not permission to skip writing things down. A team with no record of what was agreed still has the argument about scope - it just has it without evidence. What changes under Agile is that the document is short, versioned and updated as you learn, rather than long, signed and frozen.

Where it usually breaks

Almost always in one of these three ways.

Ceremonies without the point

A daily stand-up that is a status report to a manager is not the practice, it is a meeting. If nobody changes what they are doing based on it, it is costing you 15 minutes a day for nothing.

Fixed scope, fixed price, fixed date

You cannot respond to change if all three are contractually locked. This is the honest tension in most agency work, and pretending otherwise is where scope creep comes from.

Velocity as a target

Velocity is a measurement. The moment it becomes a goal, estimates inflate and it stops telling you anything.

Agile versus Scrum versus Kanban

Agile is the set of priorities. Scrum and Kanban are two specific ways of working that try to deliver on them. Scrum uses fixed-length sprints with a commitment at the start of each; Kanban uses a continuous flow with limits on how much can be in progress at once. A team can be doing Scrum by the book and not be agile, and vice versa.