Software development company DVT is a gold sponsor of the forthcoming Agile Africa 2013 Conference, with the theme: "Agility in Africa", the first agile development conference to be held on the continent. The event will take place at the Alexander Theatre, in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, on 12 and 13 August, and features a number of well-known international speakers.
In keeping with its goal to improve software development in South Africa, DVT's sponsorship will help the Johannesburg Centre for Software Engineering bring out international speakers, which will, in turn, improve the adoption of agile in South Africa.
"DVT has embraced agile for a number of years and has been providing agile development and skills to the market, which is why we were keen to sponsor the conference," says Themi Themistocleous, managing director of DVT's agile business. "We have set up a dedicated agile business unit specialising in helping customers pragmatically adopt agile in the enterprise. We are also the local partner of Scott Ambler + Associates, the world's leading proponents of "Disciplined Agile Delivery" (DAD).
Themistocleous says business is becoming more and more competitive, and as a result, business leaders are pushing for their organisations to become more agile both on the continent and in the rest of the world. "This is having a major effect on IT and its abilities to meet business challenges. The old ways are no longer good enough; there is a need for change."
According to major industry analysts such as Ovum, Gartner and Forrester, agile development has reached the mainstream. Gartner has declared that the long-term waterfall project model does not work and has entered into the "dusk of obsolescence", advising that it's time to move to iterative and agile development methodologies. "It's no longer a question of 'if' with agile, but rather 'when', which is why this conference could not have come at a more opportune time," Themistocleous adds.
Principal agile consultant and coach, Riaan du Toit, will be presenting on behalf of DVT, his topic: "Enterprise agile adoption with parental guidance".
"Any organisational change is never easy, and many companies have mixed results when implementing such changes. It is no different with agile," says Themistocleous. "Enterprises embarking on this change journey often attempt to create their own agile framework, an exercise that is expensive and fraught with danger. The solution is an agile process that comes with 'adult supervision' - Disciplined Agile Delivery, a hybrid agile framework that does the hard work for an organisation."
Du Toit will discuss how DAD addresses common issues such as:
* Reconciling a project management office that requires detailed plans and specifications with agile practices that require the minimum (just enough);
* Achieving collaboration between silos within an organisation; and
* Adhering to corporate standards in the areas of architecture, database and governance while still being agile.
"He will show how DAD uses a combination of proven techniques from scrum, XP, agile modelling, Kanban and other sources to provide non-prescriptive, end-to-end strategy for mature agile solution delivery," adds Themistocleous.
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