Friday, 18 December 2009

Can Agile be Context-Driven?

"They say they are doing Agile, but they're not doing all of the practices, so they aren't really Agile."

This seems to be a popular view, implying that Agile needs to be done "properly". A search on "agile best practice" brings up many entries. Is there such a thing as Agile Best Practice?

The Context-driven principles ( include:
1. The value of any practice depends on its context.
2. There are good practices in context, but there are no best practices. (emphasis mine)

So if you adapt agile practices to suit your context, as was described by Gitte Ottosen at EuroSTAR, isn't that context-driven agile? And isn't that the best way to practice it?