Agile for Instructional Designers

Introduction

The first time the term Agile was used to describe an iterative development process specific to software was with the Agile Manifesto written in February 2001. The Agile process aimed to make it easier for software engineers, their teams, and their business sponsors to work together and be adaptive, resulting in a better product for the end user.

But the concepts underlying Agile have much earlier roots. Some argue that Agile traces all the way back to the 1620s with the development of the scientific method by Francis Bacon. A more commonly thought of starting point is the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle developed by Walter Shewhart in the 1930s. PDSA, like Agile, is an iterative and incremental development methodology that was adapted ...