My take: What I extracted from the talk regarding agile software development is his point about keeping specifics out of the code. If the operational specifics

My take: What I extracted from the talk regarding agile software development is his point about keeping specifics out of the code. If the operational specifics of your application are kept in "data form" instead of precise a priori knowledge, it is easier to be "agile" (adaptive). Agile is an incredibly loaded word, but I think he was referring to lightweight, working software that is easily adaptable. As far as how it's software development: It's an architectural choice whether you're going to a) hardcode domain specifics into your code, b) keep some of the domain specifics out of the code, but neatly organized and structured, or c) leave the data messy but extract meaning from a large corpus statistically.