The Five Traits of Agile Projects

I submit that any project which successfully executes their practices in accordance with Agile values and principles will exhibit the following key traits (Note the acronym formed):

• Adaptive -- responsive to change (based on feedback and learning), rather than predictive plan-driven. Plans, designs, and processes are regularly tuned and adjusted to adapt to changing needs and requirements
• Goal/value-driven -- scope and solutions/activities are focused on and constrained by value-demand, producing executable-results (working functionality) in order of highest business value
• Iterative & Incremental -- short development cycles, frequent releases, regular feedback
• Lean -- simple design, streamlined processes, elimination of redundant information, and barely sufficient documentation and methodology
• Emergent results from Evolvable structures -- successful results emerge over time, using close collaboration to create "firm yet flexible" design structures that are relatively easy to dynamically change & evolve into what the final result needs to be. This pertains to structures of team/organizations as much as it does to architecture, processes, requirements and plans.

No single one of these key traits is, by itself, unique to Agile, but I claim that all of them taken together form the differentiating characteristics of successful agile projects, teams and their environment. If they are visibly exhibiting these traits then the project and team are "agile."