Freedom to estimate: You estimate and you deliver. No need to work on someone else’s estimate.
Freedom to explain: One of the toughest tasks of a developer is to explain the delay to managers. Many a times, developer wouldn’t have any evidence to show that she/he has tried different options and the task still remains to be a research item. Agile provides means (VersionOne, JIRA) to track what was being done. After spending all the estimated hours, you will still be able to add ‘ToDo’ if really required.
Freedom to schedule: Generally, developers will be taking tasks one after another working closely with Leads till the project would be completed. But, agile lets developers to plan upfront. Developers will be able to plan their personal time accordingly. If a developer likes to take two weeks of vacation, he can own stories appropriately and deliver such that the others work wouldn’t be impacted.
Freedom to Speak: Developer has an opportunity to speak up every day (in case of scrum). If a developer thinks that the sprint zero was not done well then she/he can start a discussion on day one, instead of storing the work on his desktop and losing them in a crash after weeks.
Benefits of listening: Conventionally, the collaboration was a role being played by leads. Agile multiples the chances for successful collaboration as everyone has the freedom / opportunity interact. Developers directly interact with another who has done a task similar to what he would try to start, and achieve it in very less time by collaboration. Earlier leads had to check with other modules and bind people together.
Work on a project- Not a module: When a developer start hearing what others do in a project every day, she/he gets a holistic view and minimizes the integration defects. His knowledge on different modules helps to grow a healthy cross functional group (which actually is a ‘Team’) instead of developers working in silos.
In general, Agile enables people to work as a team, and makes the issues very visible so that teams can work towards a solution. Agile is not a solution for practical issues teams may have; but it helps to identify issues, really visible.
NB : I use scrum and my views above are associated with that
