In PRINCE2 Agile Foundation, understanding the distinction between 'being agile' and 'doing agile' is fundamental to the Agile Mindset. 'Doing agile' refers to the mechanical adoption of agile practices, tools, and ceremonies—such as running daily stand-ups, using Kanban boards, conducting sprint r…In PRINCE2 Agile Foundation, understanding the distinction between 'being agile' and 'doing agile' is fundamental to the Agile Mindset. 'Doing agile' refers to the mechanical adoption of agile practices, tools, and ceremonies—such as running daily stand-ups, using Kanban boards, conducting sprint reviews, or following Scrum events. Organizations that are merely 'doing agile' follow the rituals without truly internalizing the underlying values, often resulting in superficial transformation and limited benefits. In contrast, 'being agile' represents a deeper cultural and philosophical shift, where individuals and teams embody agile values and principles as defined in the Agile Manifesto. Being agile means embracing collaboration, transparency, trust, empowerment, adaptability, and a genuine focus on delivering customer value. It reflects a mindset that welcomes change, encourages continuous improvement, and prioritizes people and interactions over rigid processes. In the context of Project Management, PRINCE2 Agile emphasizes that lasting success comes from combining structured governance with an authentic agile mindset. Practitioners must go beyond executing techniques and instead cultivate behaviours such as self-organisation, iterative thinking, and responsiveness to feedback. This ensures that agile methods enhance rather than constrain project delivery. Regarding Organizational Change, 'being agile' is critical for sustainable transformation. Simply imposing agile practices without shifting organizational culture, leadership styles, and behaviours often leads to resistance and failure. True agility requires changes in mindset at all levels—leaders must foster psychological safety, empower teams, and support experimentation. PRINCE2 Agile encourages organizations to blend the discipline of PRINCE2 with the flexibility of agile, ensuring both control and adaptability. Ultimately, 'doing agile' is about actions and tools, while 'being agile' is about attitudes, values, and behaviours. Sustainable agility demands both, but the mindset ('being') is what makes the practices ('doing') genuinely effective, enabling organizations to respond confidently to complexity and change.
The Agile Mindset: Being Agile vs Doing Agile
The Agile Mindset: Being Agile vs Doing Agile
Understanding the difference between being agile and doing agile is one of the most important conceptual foundations in PRINCE2 Agile. It underpins how teams and organisations truly adopt agile ways of working, rather than simply going through the motions.
Why This Topic Is Important
Many organisations adopt agile practices such as daily stand-ups, sprints, and Kanban boards but fail to deliver the promised benefits. This is often because they are doing agile without being agile. For the PRINCE2 Agile Foundation exam, understanding this distinction demonstrates that you grasp the deeper purpose behind agile, not just its mechanics. It is a recurring theme that influences how projects are managed, how change is embraced, and how teams collaborate.
What It Is
Doing Agile refers to the mechanical adoption of agile practices, tools, and ceremonies. This includes activities such as holding sprint reviews, using story points, maintaining a product backlog, or running retrospectives. It is about the visible actions and techniques that agile teams perform.
Being Agile refers to genuinely embracing the agile mindset, values, and behaviours. It means internalising the principles found in the Agile Manifesto, such as valuing individuals and interactions, responding to change, collaborating with customers, and delivering working products. Being agile is about culture, attitude, and philosophy.
The key insight is that doing agile without being agile rarely succeeds. Practices only deliver value when they are supported by the right mindset and behaviours.
How It Works
To truly benefit from agile, organisations must combine both dimensions:
1. Mindset first: Teams adopt the values and principles that focus on collaboration, transparency, adaptability, and customer value.
2. Practices support the mindset: Agile ceremonies and techniques are then used as enablers of these values, not as ends in themselves.
3. Behaviours reinforce culture: Trust, self-organisation, openness, and a willingness to inspect and adapt keep the agile approach alive.
PRINCE2 Agile emphasises that the mindset should guide how tactics and practices are applied. If a team only performs the rituals (doing) but does not embody the values (being), the agile transformation is superficial and often fails to improve outcomes.
Examples to Remember
Doing agile: A team runs daily stand-ups but managers still dictate all decisions and punish failure. The ritual exists, but the mindset does not.
Being agile: A team embraces experimentation, welcomes feedback, and adapts plans based on learning, even while using minimal formal ceremonies.
How to Answer Exam Questions on This Topic
Exam questions may test whether you can distinguish between practices (doing) and mindset/values (being). Read each scenario carefully and identify whether it describes a behaviour/attitude or a technique/tool.
Watch for questions that ask what leads to successful agile adoption. The correct answer usually emphasises that being agile (the mindset) is more important than, or must accompany, doing agile (the practices).
Exam Tips: Answering Questions on The Agile Mindset: Being Agile vs Doing Agile
Tip 1: Remember that being agile relates to values, behaviours, and culture, while doing agile relates to practices, tools, and ceremonies.
Tip 2: When a question contrasts the two, the emphasis in PRINCE2 Agile is that mindset (being) drives real success, not just practices (doing).
Tip 3: Look for keywords. Words like collaboration, trust, openness, and willingness to change point to being agile. Words like stand-up, sprint, backlog, and Kanban point to doing agile.
Tip 4: Beware of distractor answers that suggest simply adopting more tools or ceremonies will guarantee success. This is usually incorrect.
Tip 5: In scenario questions, identify whether the problem is a lack of mindset (people not embracing values) or a lack of practice, and choose the answer that addresses the true root cause.
Tip 6: Keep answers aligned with the Agile Manifesto values, as PRINCE2 Agile draws heavily on these principles when defining what it means to be agile.
By mastering the distinction between being agile and doing agile, you will be well prepared to answer conceptual and scenario-based questions confidently in the PRINCE2 Agile Foundation exam.
