Other Agile Development Methods

Many people have only heard of XP or think that agile development is XP. This is a pity, because there are other agile methods that have a lot to offer. In an environment where a team emphasizes agility and continual improvement in capability through regular retrospectives and experimentation with methods, the other agile methods are an ideal source of ideas and practices. My favorites are:

• Adaptive Software Development [Highsmith 1999] and Agile Project Management [Highsmith 2004a]

• Lean Development [Poppendieck and Poppendieck 2003]. Lean development is inspired by lean manufacturing [Womack and Jones 1996].

• Feature-Driven Development [Palmer and Felsing 2002].

• Crystal [Cockburn 2001] [Cockburn 2004].

• SCRUM [Schwaber and Beedle 2001].

• Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) [Stapleton 2003]. DSDM introduces a healthy business focus to agile techniques.

• Agile Development Ecosystems [Highsmith 2002] contains a good summary of agile development and agile methods.