Since 2001, when the Agile Manifesto was published, we've have debated the question: should we run projects using Agile or Waterfall? In recent years the debate has begun to feel settled. Agile is modern, fast, and flexible; Waterfall is traditional, rigid, and 'outdated'.

However, many organisations claiming to be “Agile” are anything but. They’ve adopted the terminology and rituals — work is organised into sprints, meetings become stand-ups, and (sometimes) there are reviews that are labelled as retrospectives. But the mindset or philosophy inherent to Agile, which underpins these rituals, is often implemented only piecemeal, if at all.

The result is an illusion of agility. Projects may appear faster on the surface but remain constrained by legacy processes and unchanged behaviours. This tension is especially visible in learning and development, where teams balance creative design, strategic alignment, and logistical delivery.

Misunderstanding how and when to use Agile or Waterfall as an L&D professional (or as we will see later, how to apply them in combination) often leads to learning initiatives that are late, overcomplicated, or disconnected from the learner experience.

Why Waterfall For L&D?

Waterfall project management is all about planning in advance and in detail, then executing the plan. It’s appealing because it provides structure, clarity, and control.

Work progresses through clearly defined stages; requirements, design, implementation, testing, and delivery. Each step is completed before the next begins. Stakeholders are told in advance what their deliverable will be, when it will be ready, and how much it will cost.

Where it Works Well

Waterfall is suited to L&D professionals tackling large-scale compliance projects where content must be standardised, legally verified, and deployed consistently across regions. The scope is easy to define and fix, there might be a timeline to hit to maintain compliance, and there is complexity to plan for in terms of the sequencing of deliverables.

How It's Sometimes Restrictive

The predictability and control with Waterfall project management can, however, restrict innovation. If requirements are locked in too early, the opportunity to adapt to learner feedback or emerging organisational needs is lost. By the time real-world feedback arrives, it’s expensive to act on or, more likely, too late to act on if the deadline is still going to be met.

In other words, Waterfall is great for delivering reliable outcomes — but they may not be the right outcomes.

Why Agile For L&D?

Agile was created to address exactly this limitation.

Its foundation is the Agile Manifesto, which emphasises:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
  
• Working solutions over comprehensive documentation
  
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
  
• Responding to change over following a plan

It’s useful to remember that Agile was developed in response to the demands of massive software development projects for government and defence applications.

These projects were so complex and so wide in scope that the traditional tools and techniques ceased to function. Another approach was needed — and so, Agile was born.

Where it Works Well

The agile approach values individuals and interactions, which encourages cross-functional teams to co-design learning experiences with stakeholders and learners, rather than relying solely on static briefs.

Prioritising working solutions over documentation allows learning designers to prototype and test content quickly, instead of spending months perfecting assets before any real feedback.

Client and learner collaboration ensures solutions are grounded in actual needs, and embracing change encourages iteration when feedback or business priorities shift.

For L&D teams, embracing these ideas can provoke a mindset shift that transforms how learning initiatives are delivered. Instead of designing an entire leadership or sales development programme in isolation, teams can pilot modules, collect feedback, and refine their approach. Learning becomes evidence-based, responsive to its users, and better aligned with intended outcomes.

Where Agile is Implemented Superficially

Agile is, however, often applied superficially, bringing few benefits (and often added costs).

Some organisations fall into the trap of adopting the language of Agile and its primary implementation methods without sufficiently embracing its philosophy or making the mindset shift that produces results.

Teams may hold meetings that are called “stand-ups” and name work phases “sprints,” yet decision-making and client interaction remains unchanged from the old methods.

This is what is sometimes called Agile theatre — the form exists, but not the function.

In L&D, this can look like teams running “iterations” but still delivering everything at the end; stakeholder reviews labelled as “retrospectives,” with no real learning or adaptation, or learner testing that’s delayed until the final release, preventing genuine iterative improvement.

Hybrid Project Management: The Approach Best Suited to L&D

The truth is that there are very few organisations that deploy a “pure” Agile approach — and those that do tend to be in large-scale software development, the industry for which Agile was originally devised.

This begs the questions; how can other organisations — and the teams within them — move on from Waterfall project management and gain some of Agile’s benefits?

One path is to adopt a well-designed hybrid approach that balances the planning and control of Waterfall with the flexibility and creativity of Agile.

For example:

• Use Waterfall for upfront alignment — defining objectives, budgets, and dependencies.
• Use Agile for design and delivery — prototyping learning experiences, gathering feedback, and refining content based on real user responses.

The Benefits of Hybrid Project Management

This combination allows teams to maintain accountability whilst fostering continuous improvement. Crucially, its success depends on leadership creating a culture that values learning, adaptation, and evidence over mere process compliance. Without that cultural shift, hybrid projects will inevitably revert to Waterfall-like behaviours.

A simple example of enabling this is leaders internalising that prototypes are not intended to be polished or final.

Difficulties in Organisational Adoption

The Agile versus Waterfall debate is less about process and more about mindset.

Waterfall represents control — the belief that success can be engineered through enough planning and documentation. Agile represents curiosity — the understanding that uncertainty is inevitable, and that learning is continuous.

Some things to look out for when assessing how well Agility is being used in your L&D projects is:

• Are learners involved early in the development of the project?
  
• Do stakeholders (including clients) accept imperfect prototypes as learning tools?
  
• Are insights and evidence prioritised over polish?
  
• Is feedback welcomed as data, rather than as a form of disruption?
  

These practices reflect the values of the Agile Manifesto in action. Teams that internalise them are better equipped to deliver learning that adapts to real-world needs, rather than static content that may quickly become irrelevant.

The question is not whether Waterfall or Agile is the superior approach to managing projects. Both are methods that can be applied in various ways, individually or in combination. What matters most is the mindset with which they are applied; the willingness to plan thoughtfully, test constantly, and adapt intelligently.

As teams look to meet the challenges and opportunities coming out of a rapidly changing landscape — including the rise of AI both as a tool for learning and a skill to be learned — this mindset is the real source of agility.

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Written by

Milly Gladstone

With a background in Marketing and PR, Milly has spent a lot of time communicating a lot of different messages to a lot of different audiences.

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