Part 1 - Is Agile the Answer? Are You Asking the Right Questions?
David Moses
Looking for a Sr Manager or Director level Product, U.A.T., or Program/Project Department leadership role.
Examining ways to ensure success with Agile
According to the 12th annual “State of Agile Report” the top 3 reasons for adopting Agile are:
- Accelerating software delivery
- Enhancing the ability to change priorities
- Increase productivity
Almost a quarter of respondents adopted agile for cost savings, but more on that later.
What were the actual top 3 benefits reported by the same respondents after they’ve delivered Agile projects?
- The ability to manage changing priorities
- Project visibility
- Business/IT alignment
The ability to change priorities is the only benefit respondents reported that matches the top 3 reasons for adopting Agile. I’m going to take the liberty of combining Business/IT alignment and the ability to change priorities since changing Business needs are usually the driver for those changes. At least they should be because the true value of Agile is the flexibility and ability to respond to evolving Business requirements.
This is actually a fantastic result because it means a lot of companies are adopting agile for one of the major reasons that it is appropriate to do so.
But, there’s a little bit of a disconnect here. The other 2 reasons for adoption, Accelerating software delivery and increasing productivity, came in at 62% and 62% respectively. Not really a great result but it’s an expected one. And remember the quarter of respondents that adopted Agile for cost savings?
Looking at the report, project cost reduction was last on the list of benefits. There is a lot of debate about Agile costing less. My summary on the topic is that cost savings is highly dependent on the type of project and how efficient your teams work. The flip side to that is that if your teams aren’t running like a perfect machine, get out your wallet.
Why? The answer is cost is tied to efficiency and very much to quality.
Let’s talk about quality. I’ve often said that one of the benefits of Agile is it allows you to “Screw things up sooner.” If you don’t have the proper foundation, which includes team discipline, good requirements, and great processes you will understand exactly what I’m talking about.
The good news is that delivering small iterations of new visions allows for two major things. First, it allows the business to see early mock ups and their evolution (that’s how it becomes easier to manage changing priorities) and second, delivering code sooner allows for finding defects earlier. That is a massive savings in the effort it takes to fix a defect but it also produces a more stable product.
Almost half of the respondents found the quality of their projects improved.
Looking at the top 3 reported benefits, it becomes clear that all of them have one thing in common... aligning the Business and IT.
Agile can provide better Business/IT alignment to deliver higher quality products that drive more revenue and that is a fantastic reason to adopt Agile.
But, proceed with caution. Only 16% of respondents reported a competent level of Agile practices across their organization. How do we collectively increase that competency? I'll give you a clue, it has very little to do with Agile.
In Part 2 we will look into 3 very simple questions that you can use to gauge the success of your Agile projects.
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