Bob TarneAgile Coach| AccentureLexington, Ky, United States
As a recently certified Scrum master and a PMP, I am seeing more acceptance of agile methods in organizations that have been using more traditional project management approaches. However, I don't have a lot of data points to back this up. Are other people seeing an increased acceptance of agile techniques like Scrum or XP? Saving Changes...
This is an interesting piece because there seemed to be an increase awareness and usage.
Randy Saving Changes...
Jose Angelo PintoDirector of Projects and Programs| PRODUTECH – Association for Sustainable Production TechnologiesPorto, Portugal
Agile manufacturing has been described as a manufacturing system with extraordinary capability to meet the rapidly changing needs
of the marketplace. A system that can shift rapidly amongst product models or between product lines, ideally in real-time response to
customer demands.
Agile methods provide better drivers, enablers and outcomes, as Daniel Vázquez-Bustelo, Lucía Avella and Esteban Fernández porved on a paper that explains an investigation they did on Spain. The results obtained show that, in turbulent environments, the integrated use of agile manufacturing practices promotes manufacturing competitive strength, leading to better operational, market and financial performance.
In the IT Industry, the use of agile methods is developing also.
The main problem of agile methods is said to be the lack of control, that with the diminution or elimination of bureaucracy will occour.
This means that you must have an exceptional Information System to support the agile methods, if you want the techniques to be adopted and supported by top management.
My question to the experts on this area is: In R&D areas, is there software that might support the methodology?
I'm asking because I'm connected with a very small R&D company, and we investigated if there where good and cheap (we are very small) software that might produce organizational breakthroughes and we could not find any.
Most of the offers were too complex for a small company and produced NEW bureaucracy's, thus going against the agile methods objective.
Do you know any support software that might do the Knowledge Management System for a very small company or R&D department?
Answering (finally) Bob question, it has been my experience that the agile methods are being more used, but, generally speaking (and without any facts to corroborate it) top management has not (yet) see the benefits (speed and motivation) rise to cover the costs (less control).
Regards,
José Pinto Saving Changes...
Industrial use of agile techniques is growing faster and Nokia, Philips, Ericsson are some good examples. Currently I am using Scrum, and it is quite simple. I am not sure what are your requirements, but I am working in a R&D company and we are using a web-based project management system (Trac) with some customized plugins. It is an open source tool and it works quite well.
I have had the opportuntiy to be involved in both waterfall and agile. Currently, I am certified scrum master moving on to certified scrum practioner. I can say in the last few years, I have experienced the growth of agile adoption.
The good think about agile is the abiltiy to adapt to the changing environment, the customer. A lot web development firms have quick turn around times and agile lends its self well in those environments. There is not a lot of time to plan, and design requirements are always evolving. Saving Changes...
Randy TangcoPrincipal Problem Solver| Gatekeepers Business Consulting (IT and Project Management Consulting)Edmond, Ok, United States
Hi Steve,
I am currently trying to experiment on the agile method in the company I work for. I am currently facing a challenge where the QAs we have are not familiar and are kind of struggling with the method. Is there such a thing as agile QA testing whitepaper that I can use and share with the people I work with?
Thanks,
Randy Saving Changes...
Though I haven't managed a project via agile yet, I've seen some trepidation towards it on the business side. Business owners who need a specific date of delivery tend to not appreciate the modular "learn as you go" approach of agile. They want it on day X and on no other date.
But some departments in my organization have used it very successfully, particularly in managing operations work. Saving Changes...
Randy TangcoPrincipal Problem Solver| Gatekeepers Business Consulting (IT and Project Management Consulting)Edmond, Ok, United States
I have to say that my attempt to go agile/iterative has given me a bit of success as far as the business is concerned. They liked the idea that we are making progressing and they, the business, sees the result. I have managed to roll out two features in production and they are happy. One of the biggest problems we have over here is that we have very few resources and they are all being pulled in different directions. This is one of the cause of delays in our plans. I have to say we reset the sprint plans a couple of times now. Saving Changes...
I do not have any whitepaper's on the topic. Your best bet is to browse forums and compile a whitepaper from success stories other orginizations have experienced. I see the biggest concern with QA is not understanding where they fit in. They have to understand there role and to communicate with the team. The goal is to test early and often with in a sprint to minimize the number of issues at the end of the project.
As scrum matures in an orginization you can begin to identify a teams velocity which is used for planning. With this number you can plan what functionalty will be delivered and in what sprint.
I work for a private financial services firm which leverage technology as its differentiator. With that said, the software developers (web) have embraced Agile more rapidly than the Business.
Ivy Hook, well-written book on requirements from a Management viewpoint stated that a lot of IT shops have been using iterative, agile approaches for a long time. The trend away from pure waterfall methodology started in the early 90's as the web moved toward a serious platform for business critical software.
No matter, what the next new "term" is; I think iterative, agile, Xtreme equates to delivering products faster and better.
Saving Changes...
One thing that a lot people don't realise is that when you use agile (eg. scrum) for the SDLC you still need to manage, control & report on the project. Management still need visibility of what is going on & you need to know who's doing what & when. Based on my experience agile actually requires a higher level of process maturity & discipline than waterfall for success. Requirements management remains a problem to be managed and
Also successful agile is really predicated on have great developers - no room for passengers or learners.
