Top Agile Trends in 2025: Dispatches from Agile Conferences
Start using Visor today
- Visualize all your projects and data
- Roll up multiple projects into portfolio views
- Try Visor for FREE
This year, I had the opportunity to attend the Agile Alliance conference in Texas and Atlassian Team ’24 in Las Vegas.
Both of these conferences had great insights into what agile trends you can expect in 2025. So, check out the trends that I predict we’ll see in the months to come.
Quick Atlassian Team ’24 recap for you:
Trend #1: Agile Tools Will Be Less Agile Focused
At the Atlassian Team ’24 conference this year, Atlassian announced that they’ll consolidate the many different types of Jiras (e.g., Jira Work Management, Jira Cloud, etc) into just Jira.
While Atlassian’s Jira didn’t start as an agile tool (but rather a bug-tracking tool in the early 2000s), it quickly became popular among software engineering teams that abide by an agile ethos.
However, Atlassian clearly has its sights on even bigger pastures.
If you read Atlassian’s 2024 earnings reports, they are going after more significant deals. (Think companies paying over $1 million / year for their Atlassian usage.) And that means Atlassian is looking for entire companies (not just agile teams working with software developers) to use their products. Therefore, expect changes in tools like Jira to make it more palatable to business teams. Tools like Monday.com and Asana have bridged this gap already; once-agile-focused tools like Jira will also.
I even started seeing many more LinkedIn ads promoting Jira for marketers.
This context makes sense for Jira’s announcement in 2024: they are retiring Issues.
Following our announcement at Team ’24 combining Jira Software with Jira Work Management, we’ve been working relentlessly to make Jira the place of work for all teams. One of the many initiatives we’re pursuing to make this happen is refreshing how teams’ work is represented in Jira. That means replacing Issue with a new term that represents the work of all team types, including but not limited to marketing, sales, HR, operations, finance and legal teams, and not just software teams that Jira originally set out to do two decades back. – Atlassian Community announcement
What this means for agile teams:
You can expect tools, once explicitly designed with technical, agile teams in mind, to feel more broad. Because the companies making agile tools (like Atlassian) are often publicly traded companies that must continue to grow, their sights must transcend purely the agile teams they once primarily catered to.
LinkedIn ad promoting Jira for non-agile teams:
Trend #2: Agile Teams Will Need to Grow This AI Skillset
It wouldn’t be a trend piece if we didn’t talk about AI, right?
It’s no surprise that AI project management tools are on the rise. Like all other teams, agile teams must answer a favorite question among executives everywhere: “How are you planning on using AI to improve efficiency?”
The Scrum Alliance even offers an AI course now for product owners.
While AI tools are on the rise, they are still imperfect. They do need human experts to vet the information for accuracy and relevancy. Furthermore, AI needs expert prompt engineers to get the best results.
Expect prompt engineering to become a skill that agile project managers and developers will need in 2025.
Most of the major project management tools, like Jira, have AI features. For agile PMs to fully use them, they must learn how to manage AI just like they do humans: explore how to get the best results out of them; that’s where prompt engineering comes in.
Trend #3: Mastering Analysis & Project Oversight
It’s no secret that companies want to push efficiency, deliver more with fewer resources, and demonstrate business value.
While executives often see AI as an antidote to the age-old request of “do more with less, “QA teams know that expert human intervention is always necessary to deliver a high-quality product. Furthermore, human intervention is also required when demonstrating to stakeholders, other teams, and the C-suite that projects are running smoothly and delivering measurable results.
Agile teams that can’t communicate effectively — whether using (gasp!) waterfall methods like agile Gantt charts to visualize handoffs and dependencies or dashboards to show results to executives — will suffer. Team members must be efficient when collaborating and clearly show how their work is helping customers and/or the company.
Visor Webinar on Jira Project Oversight:
Trend #4: Cost Savings
The economy pervades every corner of business; agile teams are not immune. You needn’t look further than the Agile subreddit to see rumblings of companies no longer employing as many Scrum Masters in an effort to save the almighty dollar.
Similarly, companies often look for ways to have fewer software licenses or consolidate software. Whatever the method, expect leadership to ask agile teams to look for cost-cutting in 2025.
Whether you want to work with tools like Visor (which offers a two-way sync with Jira, allowing teams to visualize project data for external collaboration) or look into ways you can have team members wear a couple of hats, you’ll likely need to show how you’re spending less this year as a team.
Jira Backlog Refinement, visualized in Visor:
Trend #5: More Diversity in the Agile Community
Having worked in tech startup spaces for 15+ years, I have grown accustomed to being the rare female specimen in a land of men speaking scrum. However, the Agile community (or, at least, Agile Alliance) has made a concerted effort to create an inclusive environment.
One of the most delightful parts of attending AgileAlliance ’24 in Grapevine, Texas was seeing that I was among many women. Many of the speakers were women. In addition, Agile Alliance also has an Agile in Color community, with an intended aim to “provide targeted career and professional development opportunities for global POC members of the Agile Alliance community.”
It was refreshing to see an environment where the agile community looked more like the global community at large.
Final Thoughts: Change is the only constant
Agile is not going away. However, 2025 will be the year that we see a return to basics. Are we driving value? If so, can we demonstrate we are?
And the economy will have most teams needing to do more with less. Working efficiently is the name of the game.
While the latest AI tools offer ample opportunities to be more flexible, we still must work with non-agile teams and stakeholders in a way that makes sense for them. And bonus points if you can save a buck while doing so.
