The other day, I ran across this blog post by Jeff Atwood in which he argues, essentially, that those who would benefit most from learning more about their profession (e.g., reading programming books or blogs, studying process methods, etc.) are most often precisely those who are least likely to seek out such education on their own.
At the end of the article, Jeff concludes, “All those incredibly detailed rules, guidelines, methodologies, and principles? YAGNI [You Aren’t Gonna Need It]. If it can’t be explained on a single double-spaced sheet of paper, it’s a waste of your time.”
This is where agile differs from other methodologies–and to a large degree is responsible for its success. You can get across the basics with four values, twelve principles based on those values and a handful of intentionally simple practices (e.g, scrum, XP).