In search of business value - moving from Waterfall to Agile

By now Software wide-spread presence across all walks of life is being felt by all specially with emergence of social media & mobile devices recently. Pace at which software need to be delivered to market to meet users’ needs was never so fast.

In this dynamic world, sticking to traditional software development methodologies is highly risky as it may fail to meet target users expectations in desired time.

Software products/ applications need to be developed in an iterative way building features by features. Edward Deming’s PDCA (plan-do-check-act) is an iterative four-step management method used in business for the control and continuous improvement of processes and products. It is the foundation for lean thinking. This is great if you are in an established market. Colonel John Boyd, a military strategist and fighter pilot, developed a similar concept known as the OODA (observe, orient, decide, and act) loop. This is very good if you are in a highly volatile marketplace.

In past, Organisation have used waterfall SDLC model in iterative way to reduce risks and to speed up deliveries however they are now adopting to Agile SDLC methodologies to deliver  business value to project sponsors.

in 2010, Gartner’s analysts (Thomas Murphy and David Norton) predict that by 2012 “agile development methods will be utilized in 80% of all software development projects”. The authors explain that although Scrum will continue gaining in popularity over the coming years, organizations will not be successful in their transition unless they move toward a team-focused culture.

Agile projects are successful three times more often than non-agile projects, according to the 2011 CHAOS Manifesto from the Standish Group.

Agile Manifesto emphasize on following four core values

 •             Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.

•             Working software over comprehensive documentation.

•             Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.

•             Responding to change over following a plan.

While Agile project management methodologies delivers value, one should perform organisations agile readiness assessment before adopting agile practices to better identify opportunities which can be best served using Agile Practices.

3 main pillars of Agile Assessment are People, Process (incl. Organisation Structures) and Technology.

- People

It assesses things like the current people capability, the perceived capacity for change, the staff demographics (PM, BA, QA) by roles and the organisational recruitment plans. It’s important to get early line of sight in these areas as it’s important to develop plans to improve skills and change the ratio of roles early.

- Process

It measures the current process capability prior to introducing any change. Value-Stream Mapping technique helps us to get a good understanding of the current process efficiency and helps to identify good places to start our improvement activities.. portfolio: the blend of projects, size, cost and other similar information. This helps us to identify good pilot projects and identify any challenges that we are likely to face integrating our new processes at a portfolio management level

- Technology

Assessments in this space are best focused around reviewing the architecture strategy and standards to identify potential pain points.

I think all organisations in the business of software applications development should perform agile readiness assessment to find out where do they stand and what all they need to address to start this change to deliver business value to its stakeholders.