[ChicagoDave]

There’s an aspect to software development relating to speed/agility. NoSQL data stores offer a schemaless approach That reduces a great deal of unnecessary friction. The amount of time we’ve spent managing relational schemas is ludicrously expensive. There are still great usage patterns for relational, but operationally is not one of them. I’d argue it’s an anti-pattern.

[aeyes]

I would not call NoSQL data stores more agile. While it is true that you can add new columns at any point in time the same cannot be said about supporting new access patterns you didn't design for.

[arborix]

People often confuse startup speed with agility. The talk "Agility ≠ Speed" does a good job of critiquing that idea. Agility is about the ability to change direction gracefully. NoSQL definitely gets you started quickly—as OP noted, you avoid much of the overhead of data modeling and making changes to schemas—but at a certain point you can get into real trouble, and that will slam the brakes on your velocity. I've experienced the same thing with weakly typed languages. These sorts of tools can be very useful in the right use cases, but trading away some of the guardrails can extract a large cost if you aren't thoughtful and careful.

[ChicagoDave]

If I hadn’t been on large corporate projects that were wildly successful in extreme shortened periods of design and development, I wouldn’t make my arguments.

Adapting to the needs of a given domain may require a relational data store, but it’s my experience those are rare occasions.