Embedding Islamic Values into Agile Delivery

We're witnessing an exciting moment in Muslim tech and Islamic enterprise. Organisations articulate inspiring Islamic principles.

The Muslim Tech Manifesto energises developers. Islamic fintech and tech startups multiply. Ma Sha Allah. Alhamdulillah! There is energy, conviction, and vision.

Many successful teams maintain Islamic values through strong culture, individual judgment, and shared understanding. Most use established Agile methods (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe) to manage their delivery work.

As teams grow and evolve, they naturally ask: how do we translate Islamic principles into the daily Agile practices our teams already use? How do we enrich sprint planning, retrospectives, and stakeholder engagement with our values, without replacing the methods that already work?

Consider the everyday decisions teams navigate:

• A development team balancing testing thoroughness with delivery deadlines

• A Scrum Product Owner weighing feature priorities: conversion metrics or user wellbeing?

• A designer choosing between engagement optimisation and transparent interactions

• A team managing technical debt: how to balance speed with future sustainability?

These decisions touch on justice (ʿadl), trust and stewardship (amānah), transparency, and care for stakeholders. They're not "Shariah decisions" requiring formal governance, yet they shape whether organisations actively embody Islamic values or gradually drift.

As teams move quickly, ethical risk often doesn’t come from intent, but from undisclosed uncertainty (gharar): shortcuts, limitations, or trade-offs that are known internally but inherited by others without consent. Ihsan Agile now (Version 1.1) treats this not as “technical debt” to be paid back later, but as an obligation of disclosure (technical disclosure) at the point decisions are made.

Muslim-led organisations and teams care deeply about Islamic values. The question is: How do we embed those values into the Agile ceremonies and practices teams already use?

How do we make values systematic, teachable, and sustainable, without starting from scratch or replacing what works?

This is where Ihsan Agile provides a practical approach: an overlay onto existing Agile methods that enriches what teams already do, rather than replacing it.

Making Values Operational

“The Ihsan Agile Guide addresses a critical gap: how Muslim-led teams can translate Islamic principles into daily Agile practices.”

Independent Evaluation

of the Ihsan Agile Framework

The Ihsan Agile GitHub repository — which contains the full Ihsan Agile Guide and supporting artefacts — was independently evaluated by the Muslim Open Source Foundation and recognised as a 🟢Model Repository (67/70).

Read the full independent evaluation ⬇️

The Three Pillars of Ihsan Agile

Ihsan Agile is built on three foundational dimensions of ethical, God-conscious work:

Niyyah نِيَّةٌ (Intention)

Clarify the purpose and higher aim of every sprint, flow, or initiative.

Work begins with conscious intention directed towards Allah (SWT) and service to His creation. Every planning cycle starts with: "Why are we building this? Who benefits? How does this serve maslahah?"

Strive for beauty, quality, and meaningful impact in all deliverables and interactions, as though Allah (SWT) sees every detail.

Excellence infused with consciousness. Every line of code, every interaction, every decision is witnessed by Allah (SWT) and has consequences for His creation.

Orient all work towards genuine benefit, not output for its own sake, but service that uplifts people and communities.

Maṣlaḥah becomes our qibla: Does this work create genuine benefit? Success is measured by uplift, not just velocity.

Ihsān إحسان (Excellence with God-consciousness)

Maslahah مَصْلَحَة (Public Good)

These pillars are operationalised through Five Core Principles and practical ceremonies embedded into your existing Agile workflows, whether you use Scrum, Kanban, or SAFe.

Read the Complete Framework ↓

Ihsan Agile is for Muslim-led teams and organisations who are:

• Already building with Islamic values in mind, and want to formalise those practices when scaling

• Maintaining ethics through culture, and ready to make it systematic and teachable

• Scaling teams, and need values to scale alongside growth

• Onboarding new members, and want clear structure for ethical decision-making

• Building for the long term, and need sustainability beyond individual judgment

Whether you're Islamic fintech, Muslim-led startup, Islamic charity, or development team within a larger organisation, if you're committed to values-aligned work, this framework supports that commitment.

Who This Framework Serves

Five Core Responsibilities

1. Facilitate Niyyah Check-ins — 2-3 minutes at planning to clarify "why?" and "who benefits?"

2. Transform Retrospectives into Muhāsabah — 5-10 minutes of ethical reflection: "Where did we embody ihsan? Where did we fall short?"

3. Embed Justice in Definition of Done — Add criteria for transparency, stewardship, accessibility, dignity

4. Conduct Stakeholder Barakah Reviews — Ask: "Did this create uplift? Was it fair? What harms need addressing?"

5. Support Shūrā (Consultation) — Ensure affected voices are heard in decisions

The Ihsan Agile Facilitator:

From Principles to Practice

The Ihsan Agile Facilitator (IAF) is a companion-coach who embeds ethical consciousness into routine workflows. The IAF answers the question: "Who ensures everyday decisions actively express Islamic values?"

The IAF is:

• Complementary, not replacement: Works alongside Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and existing Agile roles

• Helps small and scaling teams make implicit ethical practices explicit, systematic, and scalable.

• Lightweight: Adds 2-10 minutes to existing ceremonies, not hours

• Framework-agnostic: Adapts to Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, or Scrumban

• Operationally focused: Daily and weekly practice, not periodic governance

Learn more about the IAF Role ↓

Core Responsibilities

1. Reframe technical debt as technical disclosure
   Shift focus from future “repayment” to present-time responsibility and transparency.

2. Maintain the Technical Uncertainty Register
   Make known risks, assumptions, and limitations explicit, traceable, and reviewable.

3. Ensure informed stakeholder consent
   Confirm that those affected by uncertainty understand the trade-offs being made.

4. Centre maṣlaḥah in product decisions
   Weigh business value alongside public good, long-term harm, and sustainability.

5. Steward long-term care
   Hold responsibility for the system beyond the current sprint, roadmap, or team.

The Ihsan Agile Product Steward:

Strengthening Product Decisions Under Uncertainty

The Ihsan Agile Product Steward (IAPS) is responsible for ensuring that uncertainty introduced during delivery is visible, owned, and ethically stewarded.

The Product Steward answers the question:
“Who ensures that risks, limitations, and trade-offs are disclosed to those who will bear them?”

The IAPS is:

Complementary, not a replacement
Works alongside Product Owners, Product Managers, and delivery leads, without displacing existing roles.

Framework-agnostic
Works with Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, or hybrid delivery models.

Stakeholder-oriented
Attends to who is affected by delivery decisions, not just what is shipped.

Lightweight
Operates through existing ceremonies and artefacts, not parallel governance structures.

Ethically accountable
Ensures that shortcuts, limitations, and uncertainty are treated as amānah (trust), not hidden liabilities.

Designed for pressure
Exists precisely because ethical responsibility tends to diffuse under time constraints.

Learn more about the IAPS Role ↓

• You're a Scrum Master or Agile Coach wanting to embed Islamic ethics into ceremonies you already facilitate

• You're a Product Owner or Team Lead in a Muslim-led organisation seeking to operationalise values in backlog decisions

• You're a Muslim developer or designer wanting your daily work to reflect Islamic principles structurally, not just individually

• You're leading an Islamic charity or NGO using Agile methods for campaigns or service delivery

• You're founding or leading a Muslim tech company and need to bridge Shariah compliance with ethical product development

Ihsan Agile is for you if...

Ihsan Agile is designed to be tried in small ways, within the Agile approaches teams already use.

Ihsan Agile is built on a simple Islamic premise:
accountability begins with intention, not scale.

If you’re part of a Muslim-led team, you can start with a single practice for a single sprint. Use what works for you and experiment.

For example:

• a short niyyah check-in at Sprint Planning
  (“Why are we building this? Who benefits?”)

• a brief muḥāsabah reflection in Retrospectives
  (“Where did we act with iḥsān? Where did we fall short?”)

• adding ethical completeness, justice, transparency, stewardship, to your Definition of Done

Ihsan Agile calls for no new role hires and demands no methodology change. It overlays onto Agile ways of working already used (Scrum, Kanban, and SAFe).

In Islamic ethics, responsibility (amānah) is borne through intention and honesty, even when systems are complex and outcomes appear beneficial.

Teams can stop after a single practice, or continue only insofar as reflection remains helpful.

The aim is not to perfect delivery, but to remain answerable for how and why we build, even under pressure.

If you’re curious, you’re welcome to try one small practice and see what it surfaces.

Guide: https://ihsanagile.org/guide
Explore further (optional): https://tally.so/r/7Rb7dP

Trying Ihsan Agile in Your Team

Download Ihsan Agile Guide (v1.1)

Including practices for technical disclosure, stewardship, and ethical delivery under pressure