A(I)gile Development - Why Agile and Scrum Matter Even More in the Age of AI

 

Before starting into, lets revisit the Agile Manifesto

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.[1]

Artificial intelligence is changing software development at a breathtaking pace. Code that once took days can now be generated in minutes. Entire test suites appear automatically. Architectural suggestions come at the click of a button. With all this acceleration, it is tempting to believe that frameworks like Agile and Scrum might become less important.

The reality is exactly the opposite.
AI makes Agile and Scrum more necessary than ever before.

AI gives us speed, but without a shared understanding of what truly matters, speed quickly turns into wasted effort. When teams move fast but in different directions, confusion scales exponentially. A single misunderstood sentence can now produce an entire module of code that looks correct at first glance but is fundamentally wrong. Or all tests are successful but completely crap? Waste has been generated! Regular meeting like Scrum has becomes the anchor that prevents such drift. Planning to align at the start, Daily Scrums to be synced during the sprint and Dual track/Refinement to ensure the goal is still the right one. The faster we move, the more essential it becomes to stay aligned.

AI introduces an unprecedented level of uncertainty in various stages. Will you also ask your chatbot how long it will take to finish to get an estimation? During development, new ideas and better solutions appear unexpectedly because the tools themselves reveal possibilities you did not see before. A rigid upfront plan cannot cope with this. Agile, however, embraces it. Short iterations and frequent feedback loops allow teams to incorporate new insights exactly at the moment they appear. Instead of fighting change, Agile turns it into an advantage. In an AI shaped environment, adaptability is no longer a “nice to have” but a survival skill.

Continuous attention to technical excellence is still valid, also for developers, just in a slighly different way. The bottleneck in software development is no longer writing code. AI does that quickly and often surprisingly well. The real bottleneck shifts to understanding. Developers must make sense of business needs, decide what actually delivers value, evaluate AI-generated solutions, and judge whether they are correct, safe, and consistent with the system’s architecture. Scrum helps teams keep these human responsibilities visible. Work is inspected frequently, assumptions surface earlier, and misunderstandings are caught before they become expensive mistakes.

This shift makes social skills like communication more important. And despite all digital tools, face‑to‑face conversation continues to be the most effective way of ensuring mutual understanding. You immediately see whether the other person has truly grasped what you mean because you see their reaction, hear their tone, and sense their hesitation. All senses contribute to alignment. Especially when AI can amplify misunderstandings, direct human communication becomes a critical safeguard.

Scrum also provides the guardrails that the usage of AI requires. AI generate impressive results but how could it know about the customer value. It has no intuition for risk and no accountability for the outcome. Scrum’s Definition of Done ensures that generated work is validated. A Sprint Review ensures that what was produced actually delivers value. Retrospectives give the team space to reflect on how AI is used and how the process must adapt. Where AI increases capability, Scrum ensures responsibility.

As a conclusion, AI changes how we build software, but it definitely does not change why Agile was introduced and still exists. Employees still need to collaborate by clarifying intentions, making decisions and understanding what the customer really needs. AI accelerates the work, but Agile and Scrum ensure that speed is applied in the right direction. They are the boundary to give teams the structure to use AI effectively.

AI is powerful, but it does not replace alignment, empathy, clarity, or shared purpose.
Agile and Scrum strengthen exactly these things. That is why they matter more now than ever before.

Maybe now it is finally time to really start with Agile (and Scrum).

[Special to previous colleagues: Agile try #5 - really now!]