Doing Business in Real Time
About this Blog:
The global economy has a life of its own, it lives in real-time, and we are all part of it. Hello brave new world.
Agile Is Not Easy
Making the mental shift from "Why we can't" to "How we can"
Just like the word "athlete", the word "agile" grabs your attention; it sounds great. But going from desire to reality always tests your commitment. I feel good after a vigorous workout but then the next day (since I don't work out as regularly as I should) I feel sore. And then I don't want to go back to the gym.
Agility makes you sore at first too. But it gets a lot better if you resolve to stick with it; after a while you don't get sore at all - quite the opposite. On some agile development projects this summer, I saw several common issues people had to work through in order to learn agility and get their systems built within tight constraints on time and resources.
[ I do lively presentations on this and related topics - mhugos@yahoo.com ]
The most common issue is the tendency of people to try to fudge, negotiate, or otherwise circumvent the constraints on time and resources that come with agile development. People want to be agile but they don't like the tight constraints that come with being agile. They offer all sorts of reasons and excuses; they want more time to create quality software; they want more time to do system testing; or they want more time to investigate system requirements.
My response is to remind people that the constraints are actually their friend, not their enemy. Accept the constraints and use them to structure the development work; set project scope to make best use of time available. If people have all the time and all the resources they want then nobody is going to be agile because there is no urgency and thus no desire. "Ya gotta wanna," as they say, or "ya ain't gunna."
One of my colleagues who worked with me on a recent 30-Day Blitz (he's also a blogger - Aaron's Technology Musings) sent me this link to a recent post in a blog written by a developer at Microsoft. It seems there are even groups of people at Microsoft (a company with lots of resources at its disposal) who feel the need to be agile. Here's a group of developers who are serious about embracing constraints and not asking for more time to get things done.
Another common issue I see is a state of mind epitomized by the statement "That's not the way we do things here…" We all (me included) do this (believe it or not!). I have no response to this statement other than to ask how the old way of doing things is working out. I inquire if people see some ways procedures could be rearranged or tweaked to better fit existing conditions. But if the old way is still good enough (and plenty of times it is) then there is absolutely no need to be agile or to change.
A third very common issue that people wrestle with is the tendency to immediately criticize new ideas; we're all prone to it. As soon as someone suggests a new way of doing something, we all think of ten reasons why that can't be done or why it won't work. Yet, to be agile, it's important to learn to temporarily suspend this behavior. Because agility happens when
Previous Post: Five Questions That Get to the Heart of the MatterNext Post: Three Laws of Business and IT Agility
Most Discussed Posts
Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most significant game changers to hit the technology landscape in the past 20 years. With this massive expansion of the cloud, the perception of the IT organization is shifting from a utility player to a change agent. This eBook breaks down five ways progressive organizations are using cloud-based IT Management solutions to help drive innovation and become more strategic, including: adding visibility and analytics, speeding up time-to-value, lowering costs, improving prioritization, and providing a blueprint for future cloud deployments.
Read the white paper to see how IBM helped Citigroup deliver new services and enhancements to their 200 million customers faster.
There are 3 ways to modernize legacy applications: rewrite completely, acquire packaged solutions or migrate existing code. This paper explains why it's best to migrate and how IBM® Rational® software can help.
Accommodating specific lines of business can result in a hybrid ecosystem of applications and servers. The resulting complexity of this architecture makes for an environment that is costly to maintain and difficult to change when addressing new challenges.
This whitepaper will help you to define a mobile device passcode policy. Security managers must attempt to reconcile two opposing goals. They must: 1) create a passcode policy that is strong enough to protect the device if it is lost or stolen, while: 2) not annoying users with needless length or complexity.
This whitepaper, authored by The Radicati Group, looks at the key reasons organizations should consider moving to a cloud-based archiving solution. Email archiving solutions enable organizations to store, monitor, and collect electronic data exchanged by their users to comply with internal policies and regulations.
ATERNITY will showcase a 30-minute demo on how Fortune 500 companies are leveraging its award-winning FPI Platform to deliver a user-centric approach to Proactive IT Management.
For businesses to move forward and tap into the ever-expanding universe of Internet users and network-enabled devices, it's critical to learn how to make the transition to IPv6. Learn the critical steps your organization must take to make a seamless transition-and keep your business world connected.
Learn how IT teams can protect against spear phishing tactics. Harry Sverdlove, chief technology officer of Bit9 offers a frank discussion about spear phishing - the most common technique used in today's advanced attacks.
Learn how to build a solid business case for your migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux so you can run leaner, innovate faster, be more flexible and own the New Now.
Social media isn't about you; it's about everything around you. As you consider how your customers want to communicate with you, social media is something that can't be ignored. But what should your strategy be? Is social media "just another channel?" What kind of a plan makes sense for your contact center and for your customers? Join our experts as they share their insight and research results.
Hardware tokens were a popular method of strong authentication in past years but the cumbersome provisioning and distribution tasks, high support requirements and replacement costs have limited their growth. The additional log-in steps that hardware tokens require and the resulting user frustrations have limited adoption and make them impractical for larger scale partner and customer applications.
Sponsored Links
