Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools
In an agile project, great emphasis is placed on the individual in the context of the project team. Every individual
is expected to be ready, willing, able and empowered to play their part in the project, carrying out their role with competence and professionalism. Every member of the team is expected to work collaboratively with everybody else within clearly defined boundaries of empowerment, using his or her knowledge, experience and judgement to shape a project outcome that best meets the need of the sponsoring business.
Processes and tools play an important part in any project, but much less emphasis is placed on these in an agile environment. Agile processes need to be light touch, and serve to guide and support rather than dictate what individuals and teams should do and how they should do it.
The assumption is that the team members themselves are best placed to understand what needs to be done and to work out the best way of doing it.Team members typically find working in this way more enjoyable and the wider organisation benefits from the enhanced productivity that stems from clearly focused, self-organising teams. Scrum provides appropriate light touch guidance on how to achieve this, whilst keeping the emphasis at all times on the individuals involved in the endeavour and their interactions.
