I'll confess, one of the more surprising results of my recent research into Agile development in practice is the large number of motives to go Agile. From eliminating useless documentation to shortening development cycles to making the schedule more predictable, there were as many different reasons for Agile as people I interviewed.

Perhaps that's part of the success story of Agile: partly by design, partly by historical accident, the Agile movement addressed many different needs. In this way, Agile is a lot like the Protestant Reformation. Remember junior high school history class, when we heard that Luther's protest conveniently occurred just when secular princes were looking for ways to gain independence from Rome? The Agile movement arrived when more was happening in the technology industry than just the disgust of developers with schedules in which no one believed, or projects that didn't deliver what the customer wanted.

In my encounters with Agile development, including the research that I'm doing now, I've seen two perspectives on the Agile methodology (pick whichever one you prefer):

• Agile as a creed. One type of Agile enthusiast treats the methodology of choice as a set of firm guidelines, to be followed or ignored (at your peril). The closer you get to orthodoxy, as the Pharisees communicate by voice or in print, the better the results.
• Agile as an ethos. The other species of Agile enthusiast sees the methodology as a guide to action. Perfect adherence to its principles are impossible in an imperfect world, so the goal is to add a healthy dose of Agile to the blend of different techniques and imperatives.