METHODOLOGY

Agile

A family of software-development practices that prioritise short iterations, frequent customer feedback, and adjusting plans as the work reveals what was wrong about the original plan.

Last reviewed: 2026-05-24 byKevin Riedl wiki β†—

Agile is older than most people realise (the manifesto is from 2001) and worse-implemented than most teams will admit. The original idea was simple: planning further out than you can predict is wasted work, so plan short, ship, learn, replan. Everything else (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, sprints, retros, story points) is implementation detail layered on top.

The most useful question for a team that says it is "doing agile" is: when was the last time the plan changed because of what shipped last week? If the answer is never, the team is doing waterfall in two-week chunks.

Wavect is agile in the original sense: we work in short cycles, demo often, and we are willing to throw out work that turned out to be wrong. We are skeptical of the certification-industry version of agile, where the meeting cadence becomes the goal.

// FAQ

FAQs

FAQs

Ask when the plan last changed because of what shipped last week. If the answer is ’never’ or ‘we replanned at the quarter’, they are doing waterfall in two-week chunks. Real agile changes plans on the evidence the work surfaces, not on the calendar.
No. Scrum is one implementation of agile principles. So is Kanban. So is XP. Teams that conflate Scrum with agile end up worshipping ceremonies (stand-ups, story points, retros) that no longer serve the underlying goal of fast learning and adjustment.
When the scope, regulation, or interface contract genuinely cannot change (think medical devices, certified avionics, some hardware). Even there, the original principles apply at the team level; the public-facing process just looks more waterfall.