"On February 11-13, 2001, at The Lodge at Snowbird ski resort in the Wasatch mountains of Utah, seventeen people met to talk, ski, relax, and try to find common ground, and of course, to eat. What emerged was the Agile 'Software Development' Manifesto. Representatives from Extreme Programming, SCRUM, DSDM, Adaptive Software Development, Crystal, Feature-Driven Development, Pragmatic Programming, and others sympathetic to the need for an alternative to documentation driven, heavyweight software development processes convened.

Now, a bigger gathering of organizational anarchists would be hard to find, so what emerged from this meeting was symbolic - a Manifesto for Agile Software Development - signed by all participants. The only concern with the term agile came from Martin Fowler (a Brit for those who don't know him) who allowed that most Americans didn't know how to pronounce the word 'agile'." (from http://www.agilemanifesto.org/).

I am concerned too. Most project managers and PMO folks attach the phrase 'Agile Development' to software development. And they are not wrong. A cornerstone of agile development is the following text quoted from the above site:

"Manifesto for Agile Software Development

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more."

It does talk about agile development in the specific context of software development.

I like the manifesto. I use it. I see my two sons using it when they develop and sell their video games and Facebook widgets. However my concern is, do we need to narrow down the idea of agility to software development alone? Agility is an age old trait used by humans in our endeavors. If we look at projects in other industries like construction, we find agility galore. E.g. within a well-documented architecture, when a building construction supervisor finds that a certain piece of wiring cannot be routed as per the drawing, he prepares an extempore plan to re-route it and get the job done. That is tactical agility. All of us do that. All the time. So here's a mind game. I know of many discussions in the industry today regarding Agile Project Management, including how it would apply to non-software industries. To add my two cents, let me expand the above manifesto to cover all projects, and not just software development ones. Here is how it would look (I respectfully request the original authors to pardon this twist. I believe I am only expanding the scope of their thought):

Manifesto for Agile Project Management

We are uncovering better ways of managing projects by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Tangible Results over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.