Grouping the agile practices

In an effort to simplify how I explain Agile to people, I've tried to place the various practices into a small number of groupings. I've done a number of versions of this diagram over the years that have been posted here and have never been entirely happy with the results. I presented this version to XP Toronto last night to get some feedback from others in the Agile community and we had some good discussion.

The diagram here is the same one I presented last night and doesn't reflect any of the feedback I got.



This started from the idea that successful projects all have certain characteristics. They may not follow the same practices but they have certain things in common. The groupings of communication, motivation, planning and accuracy seem to be things that all successful projects share. Unsuccessful projects are lacking in one of more of these areas.

There's no single way to improve in a given area - many different practices could get you to the same goal and that's reflected in the sample practices in each area.

Note that the practices listed here are not intended to be exhaustive - I'm sure there are many more than should be here.

One comment from last night was that the label "alignment" might be better than "motivation".