During the recent years, hardware product development has changed. More and more complex products arrived on the market, often including sensors and software, collecting data and elaborating them. Also the customers have changed, and the demand for a constant release of new and customizable products has increased. In this framework, the traditional product development methods may not be adequate. One of the possible solutions could be represented by the adaptation of agile software development methods to the hardware domain. The aim of this thesis is to investigate such a possibility. After a first chapter focused on the historical background of agile methods for software development, the second chapter goes one step further and discusses agile’s state of the art outside their original domain.