Being Agile: Eleven Breakthrough Techniques to Keep You from “Waterfalling Backward”

Defer Commitment

Deferring commitment is another practice used by agile teams that comes from Lean.³ Deferring commitment means waiting until the last responsible moment to make a decision. It might be easier if we rephrase it this way: Defer critical decisions. Deferring all decisions is not practical or useful. So how in the world can deferring critical decisions help you release often? These two ideas might not seem to have much in common.

3. Poppendieck, Mary and Tom Poppendieck. Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash. Boston: Addison-Wesley Professional, 2006. pp. 32–33.

Deferring critical decisions is the practice of delaying decisions (such as a specific design point) until you have learned enough to make a good decision. ...