Today someone asked me which Agile framework I prefer to use with a new team.

An easier question to ask than answer.

Well, a direct answer is easy enough: I prefer not to use any framework.

But that’s not very informative.

What do I do with a new team?

Well, I get the team together, and formulate some working agreements.

Foremost, I want to establish the team’s primary goal. The team charter. It’s raison d’être. The “Product Goal” in Scrum parlance. This will inform the rest of the discussion, and in fact, many discussions for the duration of the team; or until that primary goal changes.

We’ll discuss how we’ll interact with our stakeholders and customers or users. How will they receive our changes? How frequently do they want updates? How will we get feedback about our changes?

On the more technical side, I’ll steer the team toward practices like Trunk-Based Development, Continuous Delivery, and writing extensive tests, to allow us to move quickly.

There’s much more I could say, though it varies a lot from team to team, product to product. But the bottom line is: Work closely with the users of the software, and establish tight feedback loops.

I believe this is the essence of agile software development. No framework necessary.