Johannesburg, 02 Oct 2014
What is Agile?
Let's start with what it is? As with so many IT things, we love buzzwords, and Agile is on top of most people's vocabulary. It is defined by dictionaries as "characterised by quickness, lightness, and ease of movement; nimble".
Most people use Google to determine what Agile means, and are then confronted with the Agile Manifesto and the Agile Principles. The question remains, however, what was the initial intent with Agile, and why the creation of the Manifesto, the Principles and subsequent rise of SDLCs (software development life cycles) to support it, like Scrum, XP and Kanban? asks Clydie Cronje, COO at EOH MC Solutions.
So what is the purpose of Agile in its most simple form... "To bridge the gap between business and IT." That is all it is... nothing more, nothing less. Agile is not necessarily quick, easily changeable, nimble or a silver bullet by any stretch of the imagination. It is a philosophy; a philosophy that has to be implemented companywide to add value, not only in IT and also not only in business.
Rise of project managers
The Scrum SDLC, and subsequent Scrum certifications, brought Agile to the fore, marketing it and making it mainstream. However, the implementation and moving of business analysts to product owners, and project managers to Scrum Masters really broke the initial intent of the philosophy. In actual fact, it made the divide between IT and business bigger.
Then, what started as an Agile SDLC, became an IT implementation, utilising new words like product backlog, sprints, time boxing, etc, to accomplish nothing more than an old SDLC called iterative development. This part is commonly referred to as: "The rise of the project managers", yet when the project managers took over the ownership of the Scrum process, the division between IT and business became even bigger.
Agile became an IT thing, when in fact it is supposed to be a cohesive, holistic company thing. Business blames IT for being slow, expensive and never delivering what they want, and IT blames business for not knowing what they want, not being clear about their requirements and ultimate goals.
Effectively implementing Agile
As mentioned, Agile is supposed to be a philosophy to bring IT and business closer together. It is not a new SDLC for IT to play with, and business must never see it as such. It is a philosophy with principles, which has to be implemented through the entire enterprise.
How do you implement Agile? Well, you need to look at where the divide between IT and business starts, and it will usually be one or more of the following values that are in jeopardy: communication, feedback, simplicity, courage or respect.
Now let's model the values under threat, by understanding the principles that underpin these values. For each principle you should have defined processes to enforce the principle. If you govern the processes then the value causing the breakdown between IT and business should be resolved. Remember, Agile is a philosophy to resolve the IT and business divide; therefore, understand the divide, understand the value in jeopardy, document the principles, and enforce the processes. Only then will you be truly Agile, with the resultant positive outcomes.
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