NCC Members have free access to this Guideline on the Principia website.

Information systems projects don't have to take so long, they don't have to cost so much and they don't have to fail. The solution is simple: develop and deliver them incrementally, constantly aligning project and programme activities to the needs of the ever-changing business environment around them, in other words taking an agile approach to their management. Unfortunately, making this happen is a difficult undertaking in most organisations.

This guideline looks at what being agile means in system development terms and how to move towards a more agile approach.

In the last couple of years, a large number of highly respected publications, such as IEEE Software and The Economist have published articles on agile approaches to software development: Extreme Programming, Crystal Methodologies, Scrum, Adaptive Software Development, Feature-Driven Development and Dynamic Systems Development Method among them. In addition to these 'named' methods, scores of organisations have developed their own 'lighter' approach to building software.