Principles to Practices

Ultimately, what people do , how they behave , is what creates great products. Principles and practices are guides; they help identify and reinforce certain behaviors. In agile development the behaviors we want to encourage are thinking, acting , and interacting . We want knowledgeable people to glean new information from the product development process; apply that new information thoughtfully; and to interact with their peers to generate emergent, innovative ideas and apply those ideas to the building of real, demonstrable product components .

While principles guide agile teams , specific practices are necessary to actually accomplish work. A process structure and specific practices form a minimal, flexible framework for self-organizing teams. The next five chapters identify and describe the processes and practices of APM.