“Agile” is a collective term for adaptive management methodologies (and practices) that have emerged over the past two decades to increase the relevance, quality, flexibility, and value of business solutions.12 They are commonsense approaches for applying the finite resources of an organization to continuously deliver low-risk, high business-value outputs within allocated time and budget constraints.
For the IT industry, these approaches are used to address the problems that have historically plagued software development and service delivery activities, including budget overruns, missed deadlines, low-quality outputs, and dissatisfied users.
Although there is a broad range of Agile methods in the IT industry – from software development and project delivery approaches to strategies for software maintenance – all Agile methods share the same basic objectives:
- To replace upfront planning with incremental planning that adapts to the most current information available (“Apply, Inspect, Adapt”).
- To minimize the impact of changing requirements by providing a low-overhead structure to accommodate variations to the originally identified requirements throughout the project.
- To build in quality up front and then relentlessly confirm the integrity of the solution throughout the process.
- To address risks as early in the process as possible to reduce the potential for cost and time blowouts as the project progresses.
- To entrust and empower staff to continuously deliver high business-value outputs by allowing them to manage their capacity and self-organize their work.
- To provide frequent and continuous business value to the organization by focusing staff on regularly delivering the highest-priority features in the solution as fully functional, fully tested, production-ready (i.e. potentially releasable) capabilities.
- To encourage ongoing communication between the business areas and project team members to increase the relevance, usability, quality, and acceptance of delivered solutions.
The last two bullet points in this list cannot be emphasized enough. Where traditional waterfall software development projects focus on using extensive upfront documentation to detail user requirements before development work can even begin, Agile approaches rely on shared communication between the development team and the business users throughout the project, with the business users’ highest-priority requested features regularly presented to them as fully functional software to confirm whether or not the delivered solution meets their requirements.
Figure 3 provides an overview of the Agile project delivery structure.
Figure 3: Overview of the Agile project delivery structure
In reviewing this diagram, it is important to note the cloud that represents project governance in Agile methods. These methods focus on how outputs are produced by the project delivery team to meet the highest-priority business requirements identified by the Product Manager. There is no standard governance or project management structure.
Some of the most common Agile methods include:
- Iterative strategies for managing software development projects, such as Scrum, Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), Feature-Driven Development™ (FDD™), the Rational Unified Process® (RUP®), and the Agile Unified Process (AUP).
- Strategies for optimizing software development work, such as eXtreme Programming (XP™), and Lean Development.
- Strategies for managing software development projects, as well as maintenance and support activities, such as Kanban and Scrumban.
- Extensions of Agile methods to support large enterprise-wide teams and shared corporate objectives, such as the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®), Scrum of Scrums, Large-Scale Scrum Framework (LeSS) and Nexus.
These Agile methods have been (and continue to be) successfully used by thousands of organizations worldwide,13 most notably in the United States, Europe, and Australia. Some of the more prominent organizations using Agile methods include Nokia Siemens Networks™,14 Yahoo!™,15 Google™,16 Microsoft®,17 BT™,18 Bankwest™,19 SunCorp™,20 and Wells Fargo™.21
Further detail about Agile methods is provided in the Bibliography.
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12 For those who follow this author’s writing, some of the introductory material from Jamie Lynn Cooke, The Power of the Agile Business Analyst: 30 Surprising Ways a Business Analyst Can Add Value to Your Agile Development Team (IT Governance Publishing, 2013), has been adapted for use in this book, serving the same purpose as in the original.
13 As evidenced by the number of signatories to the Agile Manifesto (www.agilemanifesto.org) as of December 2015.
14 P. Haapio, NokiaSiemens and Agile Development, JAOO (2008), http://jaoo.dk/file?path=/jaoo-aarhus-2008/slides//PetriHaapioCanAGLobalCompany.pdf.
15 K. Mackie, Lessons from a Yahoo Scrum Rollout, (2008), http://campustechnology.com/articles/2008/02/lessons-from-a-yahoo-scrum-rollout.aspx.
16 J. Sutherland, Scaling Scrum & Distributed Teams – Scrum Tuning: Lessons Learned at Google (2006): www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y10Jvruc_Q.
17 D.K. Taft, Microsoft Lauds Scrum Method for Software Projects (2005), eweek.com/c/a/IT-Management/Microsoft-Lauds-Scrum-Method-for-Software-Projects.
18 L. Meadows and S. Hanly, Agile Coaching in British Telecom (2006), www.agilejournal.com/articles/columns/column-articles/144-agile-coaching-in-british-telecom.
19 D. Braue, Bankwest goes Agile: Project Time Slashed (2010), zdnet.com/bankwest-goes-Agile-project-time-slashed-1339306091.
20 Suncorp goes Agile for 19k Desktop Integration Project (2008), itnews.com.au/News/130927,suncorp-goes-Agile-for-19k-desktop-integrationproject.aspx.
21 E. Matta, Is Agile Development Only for Nerds? (2008), http://radiowalker.wordpress.com/2008/10/07/is-Agile-development-only-for-nerds.