There are various agile methodologies, although ‘agile development’ is really a philosophy, not a methodology. A set of values and principles. The agile manifesto describes these values and principles, and I have also written about 10 key principles that underly most agile methodologies.
Agile methodologies are characterised as ‘agile’ when they exhibit these principles. Some examples are:
- Scrum – which focuses on agile management and on how to better organise development teams.
- XP (Extreme Programming) – which includes some management elements but emphasises technical practices more and is therefore more of an agile engineering methodology in my mind.
- DSDM – Dynamic Systems Development Method, one of the earliest iterative development methods.
- Lean Software Development – which focuses on cutting out as much overhead as possible.
These seem to be the most widely adopted agile methodologies, however there are other agile methodologies, for instance:
- Crystal
- Feature Driven Development
- Enterprise Agile (previously XBreed)
- Agile Unified Process
Information on the web about these agile methodologies seems a little scarce, however I did find this overview of agile methodologies quite interesting.
If I’ve missed any, please feel free to add them in the comments, or let me know what you think of these methodologies…
Kelly.