Agile

Agile is a family of software development principles and practices, rooted in the 2001 Manifesto for Agile Software Development, that favors iterative delivery, close collaboration, and responsiveness to change over rigid up-front planning and heavy documentation. It is less a single method than a shared set of values expressed through frameworks like Scrum, Kanban, and Extreme Programming. The common thread is delivering working software in small increments and adapting as you learn.

• Individuals and interactions - People and conversation are trusted over processes and tools to get the right thing built.
• Working software - A running increment is the primary measure of progress, not a completed specification.
• Customer collaboration - Ongoing partnership with the people who use the software replaces contract-style negotiation.
• Responding to change - Plans are expected to shift as understanding improves, rather than being locked at the outset.

For API teams, Agile is the culture underneath modern delivery: it is why design-first, continuous integration, and iterative versioning feel natural, and why an API is treated as a product that evolves with its consumers rather than a one-time deliverable. The mechanics show up concretely in the Agile SDLC, where each sprint plans, builds, tests, and ships a slice of the interface. Across the providers I score, the teams that ship the most maintainable, best-documented APIs are almost always the ones running an honest agile loop rather than treating the practice as ceremony.