There is a great article about agile software development. It's like a short introduction to Agile for managers.

Click here to read it at ReadWriteWeb.com

Some ideas that I liked:

• "The Waterfall Model is now considered a flawed method because it is so rigid and unrealistic"
• "To build software today all you need is a few good men (or women!)"
• "Using the Waterfall Model, these changes were impossible, the development cycle was too long, systems were over engineered and ended up costing a fortune, and often did not work right"
• "...in nature, dynamic systems are not engineered, they evolve"
• "Make the simplest possible system that satisfies today's requirements and when tomorrow comes, be ready to adapt"
• "Like living organisms, these systems are continuously reshaped to fit the dynamic landscape of changing requirements"
• "Without a doubt, agile methods made a major impact on how we think about building software today - dynamically and continuously"
• "Digg, del.icio.us, YouTube and other poster children of the new web era were developed by just a handful of programmers"
• "Equipped with a modern programming language, great libraries, and agile methods, a couple of smart guys in the garage can get things done much better and faster than an army of mediocre developers"