Business-driven IT - How agile is your Agile?

The Problem

Are you an IT manager in an organization that is in the early stages of your new Agile process implementation? Or are you the manager that has been involved in Agile activities for awhile but still has not performed well in terms of prompt delivery cycles and customer satisfaction? I'm curious how many of you who are reading this article would honestly reply "Yes".

Although I am no psychic and neither am I a "Know it all", with over 9 years of experience using Agile methodologies, I can pretty much infer with great certainty that often times companies do not implement Agile well enough to reap the benefits it is intended to offer.

Below are some of the challenges that can cause Agile projects to not perform well:

1. Only suitable for small projects. Large projects do not bode well under Agile processes because completion timeline requires a significant amount of project planning and requirements analysis up front, which is outside the scope of Agile. This is especially the case when IT strategies and roadmaps are being used to determine budgets and project deadlines. Fiscal responsibility may fall victim to a lack of planning.
2. Difficult to manage cost. Since Agile projects are meant for small iterative projects, the planning phase is not established and therefore cost can not be thoroughly estimated. When dealing with suppliers, contracts will have to be based on time and materials as estimates on deliverables will be hard to establish.
3. Lack of customer involvement. When the required business unit leaders and/or customers are not involved in the entire project life cylce, change in requirements can not be detected, thereby negating the very purpose of Agile. This often happens when business unit leaders and customers are busy maintaining existing operations in order to keep the business up and running, causing priority conflicts with project vs daily operational duties. This typically happens in lean organizational structures.
4. Scope creep. Since the Agile process allows for requirement changes throughout the development life cycle, it is easy for the scope of the project to expand well beyond the initial business case that validated the project in the beginning. Therefore, project governance is difficult to establish in an Agile process because the customer's input is driving the implementation through the entire SDLC.

The Solution

You don't have to be a Yoga expert to implement Agile. You just need to know when Y.O.G.A (Your Opportunity to Go Agile) arises.

Understanding the nature of Agile methodologies can help an IT organization determine when and how to use them. Even with large scale projects, opportunities arise that allow for the use of Agile methodologies. Truly being agile means that you incorporate methodologies that are most helpful to your projects, even if this means not being so circumscribed to Agile methodologies per se. The key to what makes Agile effective is constant customer and business unit leader involvement. In fact, the key to any successful project (Agile, Waterfall, V-Model, etc) will always be driven by the accountability and steady involvement of the business. 

The Wagile Process

In the Waterfall process, the business units are involved during the initial requirements and functional design stage, but fall out of the mix during the detail design and implementation phase. The involvement with business units ramp back up during UAT and training. Agile methodologies can be incorporated during the implementation phase to deliver iterations of project features to the business to review and provide feedback before the overall implementation phase is fully complete. This will ensure business units continue to have visibility and input throughout the project life cycle and helps mitigate issues with requirement changes. However, this approach requires a project manager with a great deal of experience in project governance to prevent scope creep.

The Vagile Process

In the V-Model process is similar to the waterfall, however it includes the involvement of the testing team and the business unit during the initial requirements phase. Similarly, the Agile process can be incorporated by devising an iterative feature delivery list to sustain business involvement. Again the success of this approach is highly dependent on the skill of the project manager, since requirement changes and scope creep issues will need to be mitigated.

Ultimately what determines the success of Agile is the business model and culture of the organization. If business processes and culture are so circumscribed that business unit leaders disconnect from projects once the requirements are defined and maintain a "pass the baton" attitude, an Agile process will be quickly stifled. When project managers can motivate and continue to keep business units and all other required project members involved, Agile methodologies can be conveniently introduced through the project life cycle. Remember, agility is based on elements of involvement, similar to how agility works in the human body.

Regards,

Sidney