These days every man his dog and even the cat too will tell you about the benefits of adopting Agile.
The company I work for has been working with these Agile methods for much longer than most. 5 years ago when I spoke to our customers I had to bang the drum even to persuade them of the merits of considering changing their software development processes.
Nowadays all blue chip companies are using or have tried Agile - yet if they are doing this well, then why is there still such a huge disconnect between marketing / business owners and software development teams?
Rather than bore you with a detailed answer to this question, I will point you in the direction of the key issues which I see time and time again (and which this blog will seek to explore further in later posts):
- People go on Agile training courses. They get tied up in certain practices they have been taught - yet forget the core of what they were trying to achieve.
- Agile is not a silver bullet. It needs to be adapted to suit an organisation.
- The English language is powerful because it is continually evolving. Whereas people seem content to implement the Agile practices they were taught and then sit still. Agile is "silent" on so many aspects. I suggest you look at what works and what doesn't on projects and instil continuous improvement. i.e. "Inspect and Adapt" - don't forget it!
- Finally - and most importantly - Agile describes software project processes well, yet says almost nothing regarding the phase of the software development lifecycle where marketing and business people operate. Perhaps this diagram will help:
In order to catch up with the 6.54% of marketing people who thought that their companies were able to deliver new concepts sufficiently quickly, then a good and simple place to start is to begin to think about applying some basic "Lean Development" concepts across the organisation. More of which later...........
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