agile is a process by which a team can manage a project by breaking it up into several stages and involving constant collaboration with stakeholders and continuous improvement and iteration at every stage. once the work begins, teams cycle through a process of planning, executing, and evaluating — which might just change the final deliverable to fit the customer's needs better. continuous collaboration is key, both among team members and with project stakeholders, to make fully-informed decisions. their agile manifesto of software development put forth a groundbreaking mindset on delivering value and collaborating with customers.

agile software development is an umbrella term for a set of frameworks and practices based on the values and principles expressed in the manifesto for agile software development and the 12 principles behind it. a lot of people peg the start of agile software development, and to some extent agile in general, to a meeting that occurred in 2001 when the term agile software development was coined. there were a lot of things that they didn’t agree upon, but there were a few things that they were able to agree upon, and that ended up becoming the manifesto for agile software development.

so there is nothing in the agile development methodology that inherently prevents us from creating as much documentation as the project requires. the creation and maintenance of agile documentation is a “necessary evil” to some and an enjoyable task for others. documentation in agile is “living” and needs to be collaboratively maintained by the whole team. if the documentation is light, uncomplicated, and not too detailed, it will be easier to comprehend and update. to make all of the above possible, a flexible, transparent, and easily accessible software documentation tool is needed.

so there is nothing in the agile development methodology that inherently prevents us from creating as much documentation as the project requires. the creation and maintenance of agile documentation is a “necessary evil” to some and an enjoyable task for others. documentation in agile is “living” and needs to be collaboratively maintained by the whole team. if the documentation is light, uncomplicated, and not too detailed, it will be easier to comprehend and update. to make all of the above possible, a flexible, transparent, and easily accessible software documentation tool is needed.

it’s safe to say that there’s a lot of noise around the benefits of agile project management. they came up with the manifesto for agile software development, a collection of values and principles that would be a north star for teams wondering how to become agile. but if you’re just looking for a definition of agile project management now, rather than the backstory of what it used to be, here’s a useful agile project management definition. the most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.