AGILE and IT Infrastructure projects

Yash Chopra Senior Project and Program Manager| Giesecke and Devrient India Private Limited New Delhi, Delhi, India

Hi all,

The industry is adopting the AGILE model but I really want to know if anyone of you have an idea on how to implement AGILE methodology to IT Infrastructure projects as I see AGILE implementation very apt for SDLC and Product development only.

Thanks!!

Posted: Apr 13, 2018 12:33 AM

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Kiron Bondale Retired | Mentor| Retired Welland, Ontario, Canada

A good agile coach will adapt their practices to fit the specific needs of a given project. For example, a few years ago I'd written an article on using agile principles for COTS implementations with ideas such as:

1. Emphasize working functionality over documentation – instead of spending tremendous effort on developing RFPs or detailed requirement specifications, have your end users with facilitation from business analysts define the business processes being automated using stories or use cases. Augment these stories or use cases with the bare minimum of performance or usability requirements (e.g. user should be able to complete story X with less than 10 clicks). This requirements documentation will be used to both short list vendors and to guide learning and testing efforts.

2. Minimize up front investment – the focus should be on demonstrating working functionality with a minimum purchase of licenses and supporting hardware. You want to be able to address all required business processes, so ensure you have representation from all end users/stakeholders but do this with the bare minimum required to prove whether the end user stories and performance/usability requirements are satisfied or not. A reduced up front investment is one of the benefits of going with a SaaS solution over an on-premise one, although that benefit may be offset by limitations on feasible customizations to the solution.

3. Apply an iterative approach to fine-tuning and validating requirements – have your end users work with the vendor and the project team to configure, learn and use the software in a production mode during the first iteration. Each subsequent iteration should be time boxed, focused on a prioritized list of stories or use cases, and should ideally allow for a walk-away clause at the end of the iteration if either the requirements for that iteration cannot be met or if the business feels that their needs for the overall project have been met.

Kiron

Posted: Apr 13, 2018 10:46 AM

Sante Delle-Vergini, PhD Senior Project Manager| Infosys Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Hopefully you can steer away from use cases unless you need very precise and descriptive descriptions of the user (actor) and the system, including all the steps needed to get an outcome.

Posted: Apr 13, 2018 7:44 PM

Sergio Luis Conte Helping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based Organizations Buenos Aires, Argentina

Just to put an example on the table I led the initiative to move the datacenter that support the whole operation of whole latin america from Monterrey to USA and it was done using Scrum.

Posted: Apr 13, 2018 8:32 PM

Earl Lewis Senior Project Manager| University of Utah Salt Lake City, Ut, United States

Apr 13, 2018 2:12 AM

Replying to Yash Chopra

...

Exactly, I am not a fan of AGILE model but conventional WATERFALL model, but if you look at the market today, there is hardly any opening for traditional PM (waterfall model).

But coming back to the original post, for a Data Center migration or an hardware refresh project, I do not think we can use AGILE. The deliverable cannot be delivered in an iterative way.

I believe we should use the right project methodology for the conditions at hand. There are small deliverables all along the way in a data center migration project, that could certainly lend themselves to an agile approach. Remember that "agile" includes several methodologies, including Scrum and Kanban. Success of using these approaches depends on many factors including the maturity of the project team, the organizational culture and your organizational structure.

Posted: Apr 19, 2018 10:17 AM

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AGILE and IT Infrastructure projects

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