How to Achieve a Successful Agile Adoption and Deployment: Thought Leadership

How to Achieve a Successful Agile Adoption and Deployment

Much has been written about the exhilarating benefits that Agile methodologies bring to an organization. The latest trends and industry studies also show a steady rise in the adoption of Agile methodologies. Organizations across the globe, irrespective of their size and business, have started dabbling with this new methodology; some embracing it openly while the others adopting a more cautious approach.

However, even after showing a considerable promise, Agile is still considered the second class citizen in the world of IT processes, which is dominated by CMMI®, ITIL®, and RUP. What is limiting a wholesome Agile adoption? Why do most organizations still hold on to the procedural methodologies for their core processes?

Adoption Challenges

Small projects done with Agile will definitely be successful due to the very nature of the process, but we are
still way behind in getting Agile adopted at an organizational level for large projects. Industry studies have cited various reasons; the most prominent being the non scalability of Agile for large and distributed projects.

The Silver Lining

So does this mean that Agile is incompatible with large and global distributed development – or is it just our perspective of Agile that creates these potential roadblocks? The good news is that “it is” and “they will”

To promote Agile to a status of an organizational process, we need to look at it in terms of enterprise agility, that is, how quickly the enterprise is able to respond to market changes, or better how it can take the position of a market leader and drive the market changes.

Achieving a Successful Agile Adoption

We see the following five key points, as mandatory to ensure institutionalizing Agile methods at the enterprise level. We call it the A-B-C-D-E of institutionalizing Agile methods.

(A)ssess: Make sure that you know of the organization’s inherent maturity to adopt Agile. Identify and plan for mitigating any risk.
(B)alance: Devise the right Agile methodology. Agile development is not a digital condition. It is analogous.
Organizations can achieve maximum enterprise agility even when they are lesser agile in their software development process.
(C)ommunicate: Communicate, communicate and communicate. Ensure that everybody, right from the president of the company to the developer knows and understands all about the new methodology and have their expectations set.
(D)igitize: Even while you chant “Individuals and Interactions over processes and tools”, strive for the maximum
automation possible without hindering the productivity of the developers. In a large and distributed project, automation, and the right way of doing it is the key to success for Agile projects.
(E)volve: Agile institutionalization is not a goal, it’s a journey. Its perfectly ok if the organization feels that they
cannot follow a typical Agile method and instead will go for an iterative approach. Its more important that the Agile values like self organization, early feedback, etc. are built into the team irrespective of whether they are following a spiral, an iterative or even a plan driven approach.