I recently came upon an online discussion about the most important agile principle to teach to a new group or team.

There’s one agile principle that isn’t found verbatim in the manifesto, but I think is pretty clearly present:

A culture of learning.

Without this, any agile framework, process, or workflow will stagnate and ultimately fail.

With it, even without a framework, process, or workflow in place, your team will begin to converge on well-known best practices.

After all, the Manifest for Agile Software Development didn’t invent anything new. It only recognized what had already been discovered by a number of experienced software developers, who had been (and continue to) demonstrate a culture of learning.