Agile
Agile is an approach to building software and products in short, iterative cycles, with small cross-functional teams that deliver working increments often, gather feedback and adapt. It is set out in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, written in 2001.
How it works
The manifesto values individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation, and responding to change over following a plan. Frameworks put those values into practice: Scrum organizes work into fixed-length sprints of one month or less, with defined roles and events; Kanban manages a continuous flow of work items.
Agile teams plan in small pieces, ship frequently and inspect results at regular intervals. For research, that pace is the challenge: studies must deliver findings inside a sprint, or they arrive after the decision. Many organizations respond with continuous research programs that run alongside development rather than before it.
A worked example
An insurer's claims-app team works in 2-week sprints. Its researcher runs 6 interviews in each sprint on the feature planned for the next one. Over a quarter, 3 of 6 planned features change scope after research, and one is dropped, saving an estimated 4 sprints of build time.
Related
Automate this in Pulse
A sprint review can open on customer reaction to the build it is reviewing, since a Pulse study can be fielded and read between one stand-up and the next.