How Agile Works
Consider the following example: Your company is faced with a product feature that suddenly springs up from a competitor. In order to react to this competition, a modification needs to be made to your own product roadmap.
Changes to the product roadmap require approval from the VP of Marketing, and the VP of Product. One VP is currently unavailable (on vacation), but when she comes back in two weeks, the other VP will be on a roadshow in the Midwest. Their schedules are so busy that a meeting with both present is not possible until 6 weeks from now. You schedule the meeting, which has to be rescheduled because the VPs were pulled into an emergency call with the CEO at the last minute. Finally, after three months, you are ready to roll, but a small issue surfaces and you need one more approval…. Another month gone.
It’s been four months and now you and your team can start work but… you are required to use a ‘change management board (CBR)’ for changes to scope, which constantly slows you down. Add on the approvals required for getting the new finished product version into the hands of the customer (e.g. release to production)
Twelve months and three competitor product versions later, you finally catch up with what your competitor brought to market ONE YEAR AGO…
As a general overview, there are two common approaches to software project development: the Waterfall and the agile approach.
· TheWaterfall approach or methodology is considered a sequential development process. Progress is seen as being linear and flowing steadily downwards like a waterfall through the phases of Conception, Initiation, Analysis, Design, Construction, Testing, Production and Implementation, and Operationalization.
· TheAgile approach comprises a toolkit of development methods based on iterative and incremental development. Here, requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams, which encourages rapid and flexible response to change.
In a nutshell, agile emphasizes:
1. Taking a collaborative approach to solving problems
2. Anticipating and leveraging change, rather than trying to resist it
3. Shortening feedback loops to enable quicker learning cycles
4. Delivering valuable product updates to customers frequently
5. ‘Growing’ solutions in context (rather than lengthy planning cycles followed by force-fitting solutions into context)
6. Empowering and supporting teams of experts to operate at their full potential (rather than driving them)
Agile means being nimble and adaptive with information required in a just-in-time format. Where traditional methods require documentation to be in a finished stage before the project development begins, Agile works in shorter cycles with immediate feedback. This means models, requirements, lists and other artifacts will be updated on the fly, but the long-term organizational strategy will remain stable.