Compliance Is A Hurdle, Not A Barrier, To Agile

Experience shows that Agile and compliance are not as incompatible as they might seem. Forced to deal with onerous compliance requirements, Agile teams have crafted strategies for dealing with each type of challenge. Documentation, validation, verification, approvals — these and other aspects of compliance pose not just one type of challenge but several. Fortunately, each regulation demands adherence to only a subset of all possible compliance requirements, which allows Agile teams to narrow their efforts to dealing with only the items on that list. At their core, many compliance rules resemble each other, so Agile tactics developed to satisfy one set of auditors or regulators will go a long way toward successfully dealing with the next. Ultimately, compliance merely changes the definition of done, the type of challenge that Agile teams should be well prepared to meet.