During an event at IBM offices in San Mateo, Calif., speakers from the agile development space offered perspectives on benefits and issues faced when moving to an agile paradigm.

"I think the challenge, whenever we try to encapsulate a short definition of , is that it expands in a lot of directions," said Rich Mironov, chief marketing officer at agile consulting firm Enthiosys. "Really, it's a set of umbrella terms for a set of approaches that are going to be iterative, incremental and collaborative."

Agile technologies feature more frequent delivery of smaller, valuable increments and build quality in rather than add it in at the end, according to Mironov's presentation. Active user involvement is part of the process and teams must be empowered and self-motivating. Benefits include strategic flexibility, improved team morale, deeper connection, and alignment with markets and greater profitability.

Better market alignment is achieved through more direct involvement with customers while profits can be greater because agile enables more software to be shipped at a higher quality and more product to be built with fewer resources, Mironov explained.