New tools and techniques are helping even the most traditional and geographically dispersed companies adopt agile approaches to software development. And it’s none too soon, as technology and economic trends raise the bar on rapid communication and positive return-on-investment.
Adopting an agile project management approach to software development can be a daunting task for some organizations, particularly those that have not encouraged open communications with and within their IT departments in the past. But, changes in the web applications arena, along with globalization trends, have created an environment in which agile practices can be the best way to ensure a positive return on project investment.
“Today you have a lot of challenging and dynamic factors that go into any software product,” says Neil Fox, client partner at the Palo Alto, Calif.-based product engineering outsourcing services firm Symphony Services. “The needs of customers are changing, the competition is driving rapid change, and cost is even more of a factor today than it was a few years ago. People are concerned about saving money and getting to value sooner rather than later.”
In the past, large IT software projects have been prone to generate high failure rates, with the rigidity of traditional project guidelines often cited as a culprit. The larger the