Gist.

Ten years after the Agile Manifesto was signed by an impassioned group of software developers in Utah, the processes and principles outlined in the document have begun to infiltrate areas of business outside software development.

For the newbies, Agile is a software development methodology which promotes adaptive planning, a time-boxed iterative approach, evolutionary development and delivery, and a rapid, flexible response to change. Guided by 12 principles, Agile development puts an emphasis on results, productivity, fact-to-face communication, collaboration over negotiation and most importantly, satisfying the customer through the quick delivery of software.

After a decade of helping small to medium firms execute more efficiently, development and corporate IT managers have gotten the word about Agile and we’re now starting to see its methodologies put to use across the enterprise.

At Gist, we’ve deployed Agile practices throughout marketing, product development and even to our funding rounds and high-level corporate goals. A closer look at our New Workstyle philosophy reveals the strong influence of Agile methods on our individual workstyles too. We just think it’s the right way to get stuff done. As shown in the infographic below, Gist’s Agile method comprised an 18 month ‘horizon’ focus on big corporate goals; six month ‘directional’ focus on product-centric goals; three month product roadmap; one month long marketing themes; two week long dev sprints; and one sprint in preview (less than 100-200 limited release for tricky new features and rollouts).

In researching exactly how Agile processes are spreading across businesses in new industries, we found some very cool stats:
1. 66% of Agile firms say they complete projects faster (tweet that stat)
2. 78% of Agile firms say accelerating time-to-market was the biggest reason for adoption (tweet that stat)
3. Bigger companies are turning to Agile: 32% of firms have 250+ employees (tweet that stat)

Enjoy and share this visual representation of Agile’s core tenets and trends and leave a comment if you’ve experienced an increase in productivity using the Agile method in your business.