Agile 2026: From Manifesto to Reality What Remains of the Ideas of Agility After Years of Corporate Practice? MICHAŁ OPALSKI / AI-AGILE.ORG
Abstract When seventeen software practitioners gathered in Snowbird, Utah, in February 2001, they probably did not anticipate that their short declaration would become one of the most influential documents in modern management and software engineering. The Agile Manifesto was created as a response to rigid development methodologies, excessive documentation, long delivery cycles, and organisational structures that often prioritised procedural compliance over customer value. Its message was deceptively simple: people matter more than processes, working software matters more than extensive documentation, collaboration matters more than contractual formalities, and responding to change matters more than blindly following a plan. Twenty-five years later, Agile has become a mainstream element of corporate vocabulary. Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, DevOps, product operating models, Agile transformation programmes, and enterprise agility initiatives have entered the everyday language of organisations ac...