12 Agile Principles — #8 of 12

Promote Sustainable Development

“Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indeﬁnitely.”

Many of the underpinnings of agile come from lean manufacturing and total quality management (TQM). In a manufacturing environment, companies learned many years ago that running a manufacturing plant like a sweatshop and forcing workers to work an excessive number of hours under poor conditions does not often result in high-quality products.

A similar thing is especially true in an agile environment, because the success of the effort is so critically dependent on the creativity and motivation of the team. In that kind of situation, it is even more important to create an environment where work is sustainable over a long period of time.