Ithuta JV

Source: DTSAgile - The Agile Process

Agile practices bring sanity back to software projects.

Very simply, agile practices iteratively and incrementally deliver high quality, valuable, working software to customers. Agile practices empower software development teams to effectively guide software development projects and embrace change in a project as normal and to be expected. Most importantly, agile development emphasizes collaboration and feedback, both internal and external to improve the quality and value of software as well as to provide continuous improvement of the development process itself.

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The agile process is an iterative process that breaks complex work down into short iterations. Before an iteration begins, the development team collaborates with the customer to develop a backlog of stories that will address the needs of the customer. It's kind of like a to-do list for the project. The customer prioritizes the list to make sure that the most valuable stories are at the top of the backlog. The development team selects a set of stories from the backlog that they think can be completed by the end of the iteration (usually 2-4 weeks in length) and decomposes them into small tasks.
Iteration Mechanics

The customer reviews the backlog and can add, delete, or modify stories based on their current business needs or on the results of the last iteration. This kicks off the next planning meeting and another iteration. The team continues in this iterative fashion until the project is completed.

This is the heart of agile software development. Delivery of working software on a regular basis, customer collaboration, responding to change, and enabling and embracing the interactions of individuals on a project team.