3: Agile Methodologies and Delivery Approaches
- Page ID
- 135017
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Agile is not one single method. It is a family of approaches built around similar values: delivering value early, collaborating with customers, responding to change, and improving continuously. When people say, “We are doing Agile,” they may mean Scrum, Kanban, Lean, XP, Disciplined Agile, SAFe, or a hybrid approach that combines practices from multiple methods.
This chapter gives you a practical guide to the major Agile methodologies. The goal is not to memorize every detail of every framework. The goal is to understand why different methods exist, when each one is useful, and how to choose an approach that fits the work instead of forcing the work to fit a method.
For PMI-ACP, this chapter is important because the exam is not only about Scrum. Scrum is common, but PMI-ACP expects you to understand Agile more broadly. You should be comfortable recognizing iteration-based methods, flow-based methods, Lean thinking, technical practices, governance-oriented approaches, and scaling approaches.
Key Learning Objectives
By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:
Explain why Agile has many methodologies instead of one universal method.
Distinguish between iteration-based, flow-based, Lean, governance-oriented, hybrid, and scaling approaches.
Describe Scrum, XP, Crystal, FDD, Lean, Kanban, Scrumban, DSDM, Disciplined Agile, SAFe, LeSS, Nexus, and Scrum of Scrums at a high level.
Choose an Agile approach based on context, team size, uncertainty, governance needs, delivery rhythm, and organizational constraints.
Recognize common methodology selection mistakes in PMI-ACP-style questions.