Few businesses are more volatile than the internet; few markets as fiercely contested as the still-emerging, passion-inducing and fast-paced world of digital music. What better opportunity, therefore, to apply agile principles as a means of delivering maximum value to a mass market while embracing chaotic change?

Yet the elements that made Yahoo! Music cry out for an agile approach also presented major stumbling blocks - not least the challenge of harnessing teams and technology obtained by serial acquisition, with competing passions, perspectives and technical expertise. Ultimately the team was able to face and overcome these challenges by unifying around an increasingly agile business philosophy that addresses not only software development, but the entire Music organization.

In this experience report, the lessons of agile adoption at Yahoo! Music are considered, applied and finally distilled into a set of general principles that we hope might inspire other teams to get their agile freak on!1