Agile Contracting: Balancing flexibility with certainty

Agile contracting is on the rise, bringing with it requests for contracts which support the flexible approach of iterative development while including the legal contractual protections and certainty that customers (and their lawyers) usually demand.

This paper explores how procurement and legal functions can rise to this challenge. It explains Agile methodology (contrasting it with the more traditional Waterfallmethodology); flags common risk factors for Agile development projects; identifies the key challenges when drafting contracts which support Agile projects (and how to mitigate some of the risks) and touches on some of the different commercial models commonly used for Agile projects.