Agentic Agile is a guide to decomposing work into phases that keep you involved in what AI is building. It is about structuring the work — before, during, and after each session — so that ownership stays with the team, not the model. It works on greenfield projects and legacy codebases alike. The codebase age doesn't change the need for checkpoints.
1. Roles
Agentic Agile adapts the four Scrum roles. The Agent is added as a fifth participant with defined responsibilities.
| Role | Responsibility |
|---|---|
| Product Owner | Owns the backlog and priorities. Defines what gets built and why. Approves phase entries in the Spec File before Build begins. |
| Scrum Master | Facilitates the methodology. Keeps phases well-scoped. Ensures Reviews are completed and recorded. |
| Developer | Executes phases with the agent. Accountable for all agent actions within a session. Must be able to explain what was built before the phase closes. |
| Stakeholder | Consumer of shipped output. Not present in day-to-day phases, but the work is accountable to them. |
| The Agent | A named collaborator. Executes within the scope defined in the Spec File. Leads the Review — asks questions, surfaces gaps, flags divergences from the spec. Does not close a Review without Developer sign-off. |
2. The Spec File
The Spec File is the single source of truth. It may be a markdown document, a Jira project, a Linear board, or any structured record the team maintains. Format is not prescribed. What is prescribed: every phase has an entry before Build begins, and that entry defines the scope, the completion criteria, and — after Review — what was built and decided.
3. Phases
A phase is a subdivision of a ticket — chunk sized so the agent can execute it with a clear, verifiable endpoint. One ticket may produce one phase or several. The right size is whatever can be handed to the agent with unambiguous completion criteria.
Phases are not tracked independently of their ticket. The ticket is the unit of planning; the phase is the unit of execution.
4. The Workflow
| Stage | Who | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Spec | Developer + Product Owner | The ticket is broken into phases. Each phase gets clear completion criteria before Build begins. The Agent does not start without defined scope. |
| Build | Developer + Agent | The Agent executes within the boundaries set in the Spec File. The Developer is accountable for all agent actions. |
| Review | Agent + Developer | The Agent leads the closeout. It asks questions to verify the Developer understands what was built, flags divergences from the Spec File, and records decisions. The phase does not close until the Developer can explain what shipped. |
5. The Escalation Ceremony
When a Developer cannot answer the Agent's Review questions, those questions are recorded as unresolved and escalated. The phase may close with open questions logged against the ticket — it does not block indefinitely.
The Escalation Ceremony is run by the Scrum Master. They inspect accumulated unresolved questions, determine the appropriate resolution path for each, and assign accordingly. Three Amigos — or any equivalent group with the right domain coverage — is a common output. The ceremony does not prescribe who resolves a question; that is the Scrum Master's judgment.
6. What tends to work
7. Scrum Mapping
Agentic Agile does not replace Scrum. It defines what happens inside each sprint when agents are doing the execution.
| Scrum | Agentic Agile equivalent |
|---|---|
| Sprint planning | Phase scoping — breaking tickets into Spec File entries with completion criteria |
| Sprint backlog | The Spec File entries for the current sprint |
| Daily standup | Review Records — the agent-led closeout at the end of each phase |
| Sprint review | Standard Scrum sprint review, now evaluating agent-built output against the Spec File |
| Retrospective | Standard Scrum retro — unchanged |
| Three Amigos | One possible output of the Escalation Ceremony — convened by the Scrum Master to resolve questions that surfaced in Reviews and couldn't be answered by the Developer alone |
| Definition of Done | The Developer can explain what was built. The Spec File reflects what shipped. |
Open Draft
Something here doesn't match your experience? This guide is maintained in the open — proposals and challenges are welcome.