This is part 2 of a 10-part series I am writing on Agile Project Management, by Jim Highsmith.

Like most methodologies, agile and otherwise, Agile Project Management has some foundational principles. The six principles are divided into two groups of three. One group is focused on product delivery, while the other deals with management. Today I will explain in detail the principles grouped under Product Delivery:

• Deliver customer value
• Employ iterative feature delivery
• Champion technical excellence

Delivering customer value puts the focus back where it belongs, on building working software. Too many process-heavy organizations seem to think that completing process documentation means progress is being made (I’ve been there and it isn’t pretty). By making this a core principle, process documentation and other “compliance” activities are properly seen as wasted effort to be minimized (see my Lean Software Development Overview).

Employing iterative feature delivery is based on two fundamental software development facts. The first is that iterative development is all but required for any non-trivial software project (see Agile and Iterative Development). The second is that feature-based development results in tangible progress that the customer can interact with, improving the feedback back to the development team.

Finally, championing technical excellence keeps quality high. High-quality software includes many factors other than defects, such as reliability, stability, scalability, performance, adaptability to future needs, etc. (see Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering). These facets of quality, expressed through technical excellence, deliver customer value throughout the application’s lifetime.