Agile software development has many very common-sense ideas in it, but if it was all common-sense we'd have been using it long ago. Agile also contains counter-intuitive ideas: paradoxes that make it hard for people accept. For example, the notion that we go fast BECAUSE we take quality to the max is paradoxical for people. They are used to having to trade off speed and quality. On the other hand the idea that those who do the work are best placed to estimate it is seen as perfectly sensible. How can a coherent design emerge if design is done one iteration at a time? Another paradox. But it's easy to accept that when you build a system iteratively, you can learn more quickly from your experiences - that's common sense. We’ll explore the 5 other paradoxes, and you’ll see how a grasp of these helps you to take your agile practices to the next level.