Agile concepts and why they are used
Agile is values and principles, not a fixed method
Agile is a way of working suited to complexity and uncertainty. PRINCE2 Agile draws directly on the Agile Manifesto's four value statements (individuals and interactions over processes and tools; working products over comprehensive documentation; customer collaboration over contract negotiation; responding to change over following a plan) and insists that the items on the right still matter - the values describe relative priority, not replacement.
Two mechanics underpin most agile working. Empirical process control rests on transparency, inspection and adaptation, enabled by short timeboxes that produce something real to inspect. Iterative and incremental working: iterative means revisiting and refining the same thing; incremental means adding complete, usable pieces of value. Scrum is both; pure flow-based working is largely incremental.
Organisations adopt agile to reduce risk by delivering early, to absorb change cheaply, to raise quality through frequent feedback, and to make progress visible. It suits work where requirements cannot be fully defined up front - often described using complexity models where 'complicated' work can be planned and 'complex' work must be probed and adapted.
Traps: answers implying agile means no planning, no documentation or no governance are almost always wrong; timeboxing (a fixed period) is not a deadline; self-organisation does not remove direction from the project board; 'respond to change' does not mean every change is accepted.
Rule of thumb: if an option claims agile removes control, documentation or planning, reject it - agile changes how much of these there is and when they happen, not whether they exist.