What Is Agile Project Management and How Can It Benefit Any Business?

Agile project management isn’t just for tech companies anymore. While it was born out of software development, the agile mindset has become a transformative approach across industries — from education and consulting to nonprofit work and community development.

At Sarah Wolters Co., we help mission-driven teams use agile project management to get more done while staying aligned with their core values while they do it.

What Is Agile Project Management?

Agile project management is a flexible, iterative approach to getting work done. Instead of building everything at once and delivering it at the end, agile breaks work into smaller pieces, delivering value along the way and adapting based on feedback and learning. This ties directly into the reflective nature of education and many other industries.

Key principles of agile include:

• Collaboration over silos

• Responding to change instead of sticking to rigid plans

• Customer-focused delivery

• Continuous reflection and improvement

These values work for technology as well as community programs, education leaders, consulting firms, and nonprofits that need to move fast, stay responsive, and deliver meaningful results.

Agile Project Management in Action (Outside of Tech)

1. Educational Program Design

In one of our consulting projects with a youth-serving organization, we applied agile project management to build a multi-week leadership program. Instead of planning the whole curriculum upfront, we:

• Started with a rough outline

• Piloted Week 1 content

• Collected real-time feedback from participants

• Adjusted content and facilitation week by week

This not only led to stronger engagement, but it helped the organization model responsive, learner-centered leadership throughout the program.

2. Public Sector Consulting

When consulting with local government teams on community engagement strategy, we could use agile principles to:

• Launch small, low-risk pilot initiatives

• Hold regular check-ins to evaluate community feedback

• Make quick pivots when things weren’t working

This approach builds trust and transparency, without the long lag times of traditional planning.

3. Professional Competency Consulting (Leadership, Communication, DEI)

We often use agile in our soft skills consulting work. Instead of waiting until a “perfect” strategy is developed, we co-create a few key action steps with the client, roll them out, evaluate impact, and adapt as needed.

This keeps momentum moving and teams engaged.

Why Agile Works Across Industries

Whether you're an educational leader  in Kansas City or a national nonprofit leader, agile project management:

• Keeps teams aligned and focused

• Reduces wasted time and effort

• Builds in space for learning and reflection

• Creates space for collaboration and innovation

• Supports fast-changing environments like community engagement, DEI implementation, and even family education programming

Want to Try Agile for Your Team?

At Sarah Wolters Co., we offer agile project management training in Kansas City and virtually for teams across the country. We specialize in adapting agile tools for:

• Educational consulting

• Government partnerships

• Social impact organizations

• DEI consulting

You don’t need to be a tech company to be agile, you just need to be ready to rethink the way you work.

Let’s build something better, together.