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How to mature agile

Making the development-operational portion of the software life cycle more agile is the next logical step of the journey, says Jaco Viljoen, agile specialist at IndigoCube.


Johannesburg, 21 Jul 2015
Jaco Viljoen, agile specialist at IndigoCube
Jaco Viljoen, agile specialist at IndigoCube

New business paradigms are emerging rapidly, driven by the need for organisations to respond rapidly to changing customer preferences and cutthroat competition. As a result, companies around the world are adopting agile methodologies. However, says Jaco Viljoen, agile specialist at IndigoCube, many companies do not yet fully realise that agile is a journey, not a destination.

"Most people begin the agile journey by implementing Scrum, which is in fact a great place to start - but it is just the start," Viljoen explains. "Internationally, Scrum, or one of its variants, accounts for 75% of all agile projects, depending on which research you use."

Scrum techniques have successfully optimised the 'upstream' relationships in the agile development life cycle, improving the collaboration between the business and development teams. As a result, the software is greatly improved in terms of both quality and desired functionality.

However, Viljoen argues, to mature one's agile project, attention now has to shift to the 'downstream' portion, focusing first on the interaction between the development and operations teams. At present, operational teams aspire to stability, and see changes as a source of instability and thus adding unnecessary risk, whereas the agile methodology practised by development teams sees the process as continuous.

The culprit here is the traditional model, which distinguishes between the finished piece of software and subsequent changes. Agile, by contrast, thinks of the application as being in continuous development and delivery in response to the shifting needs of the business; thanks to Scrum, these are now being rapidly communicated by business to the development team.

"The nature of the relationship between development and operations will have to undergo the same level of change as that between development and the business. This is the next step in maturing agile," Viljoen observes. "It's difficult to do, but the good news is that we don't have to reinvent the wheel: the global agile community has developed ways to help the operational team adapt to constant changes."

The process of bridging the divide between software development teams (Dev) and operations/infrastructure (Ops) teams is widely known as DevOps. International best practice indicates the need for far-reaching mindset (and cultural) change in both teams, along with the use of effective new technologies to automate processes.

The mindset change involves moving to a much more collaborative approach, with Ops being involved much earlier in the development process, and Dev staying involved much longer.

New technologies have been developed to automate the deployment process, which is now continuous, thus reducing labour and error. Similarly, testing can now be largely automated to enhance accuracy and reduce the time taken, especially when it comes to regression testing. A final category of technologies enables the whole complex environment to be managed by providing a visualisation of the entire deployment pipeline.

"Making the development-operational portion of the software life cycle more agile is by no means the end of the journey, though; it's just the next logical step," Viljoen cautions. "Thereafter, companies need to consider how to integrate customers into the process, something that is already beginning and will take agile to a whole new level."

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IndigoCube

IndigoCube helps organisations to improve the quality of their software. It does this by enabling and improving the agility, productivity and security of the application life cycle and specialises in agile transformations, business analysis, software testing and application security. The application of best practices and the development of requisite skills is core to all its solutions and it partners with some of the world's leading vendors. IndigoCube is ideally positioned to boost productivity and long-term return on investment in its focus areas. www.indigocube.co.za

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