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Which Agile Process Is Right For Me?
May 2007
Which Agile process is right for you? Of course, the answer is it depends. There are many - some say too many - different processes that fit under the Agile umbrella and almost every company implements them differently. The idealistic phase is over, and teams are quite practical in the ways in which they adopt and adapt Agile processes. But many are overwhelmed by the tasks of selecting specific practices, fitting them with legacy processes, and finding the right tools to support their efforts.
For many companies, the real question is: "Which Agile processes should I adopt and how should I go about adopting them?" Doug Shimp and Dan Rawsthorne explore the metaphors of Scrum to help teams understand how best to implement this process. Hubert Smits discusses the multiple levels of planning that are necessary to scale Agile projects in an organization. Approaching the adoption of Agile practices from a business perspective, Levent Gurses stresses the importance of evaluating Agile methods and practices according to their contribution to business value.
To implement Agile processes and minimize business disruption, Ross Pettit advocates that IT organizations focus on three primary goals: achieving "completion integrity," providing meaningful transparency, and removing underlying organizational constraints. Ahmed Sidky has developed an Agile Adoption Framework, a structured and repeatable approach to guide and assist agile adoption efforts. [Part I of his two-part article defines the framework, what he calls the Sidky Agile Measurement Index (SAMI). The second half of his article, to be published in a future issue, will discuss how to use the framework to guide agile adoption initiatives.] Joe Krebs proposes the concept of the "Agile Pyramid," extending the role of Agile processes from development and project management to portfolio management and also corporate strategy. And Venkatesh Krishnamurthy shares his experience implementing Agile processes at Valtech India, where top-down management support was a key success factor.
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Making Sense of the (Too) Many Agile Processes
Many IT managers assume that once they've convinced management and their developers to adopt an Agile process, the hard work is done. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. I find companies spending as much, if not more, time determining which process (or processes) to pick as they do training their staff in how to use them. The Agile market today is flooded with options - mostly good ones - but inexperienced shops may be overwhelmed. We've reached the point where consensus and consolidation are necessary for this market to scale. Agile teams must pressure their vendors, consultants, and the industry thought leaders to help move the Agile market forward and make it accessible and useful to mainstream IT shops. In the meantime, they must seek out means to work together, sharing their best practices and helping the industry to coalesce.
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The Metaphors of Scrum
We claim that by exploring the metaphors of Scrum, many of the common confusions and debates surrounding Scrum are easier to understand. It has been our experience that people often reach different conclusions with the same words because they are using different metaphors. Additionally, we have observed that that once people become aware of the differences in their applied metaphors they can see each other's point of view more easily.
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A Disciplined Approach to Adopting Agile Practices: The Agile Adoption Framework, Part 1
Over the past few years organizations have asked the agile community "Why should we adopt agile practices?" Today, however, they are turning to the agile community, with a different question: "How do we proceed with adopting agile practices?" Unfortunately, there exists no structured approach (at least that is published in the public domain) for agile adoption. The absence of guidance and assistance to organizations pursuing agility is the main problem addressed by this article.
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 | Adjusting Agile and Adjusting To Agile
Shaping
an Agile process that delivers value is not a selection of prescriptive
actions. It is a conscious effort to fit
and mature best practices in an environment.
Three core questions guide this process:
What will provide sufficient
completion integrity for the work we do?
What will create meaningful
transparency of the work being done?
What are the underlying
organizational constraints that will impede changes in the way work is
done? ...
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 | The Agile Pyramid - Aligning the Corporate Strategy With Agility
Agile software engineering and agile project management have become more mainstream in recent years with great success. But the benefits from agility should not have to stop there. Instead of initiating a project and letting the team run with it, progress reporting, planning and estimating should translate through all the channels, back to the corporate strategy. That way, executive management or the PMO can continuously balance the vision of the organization. This article will present these con...
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 | Increasing Business Value by Adopting Agile Methods
The prospect of adopting Agile to deliver value to customers
faster while reducing feature fatigue has captured the imagination of Product
Managers everywhere. In the past few years a rising number of companies have
experimented with Agile practices, hoping to bring the most valuable product
features faster to the market and gain strategic advantage. But many companies
have had difficulties adopting the new Agile practices. Some have faced
employee or department resistance to change during...
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 | Scaling Agile Processes: Five Levels of Planning
Experience gathered
during large-scale implementations of agile concepts in software development
projects teaches us that agile methods, like Scrum, do not scale to program,
product and organization levels without change. However, various planning
frameworks have, in fact, been used successfully in large-scale agile projects,
which can broadly be defined as projects that involve over 50 people and take months
or years to complete. One such framework relies on five levels to address
...
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 | Benefits of a Top-Down Agile Adoption Strategy
Many software companies are adopting Agile methods at an exponential rate - whether the adopting company is a software service or a product development firm or whether the work is on retail domain or avionics. This article covers the challenges that organizations may face and also recommends possible solutions that could help in quickly adopting Agile. The article is based on my experiences while adopting Agile at Valtech India. I've also had the privilege of working with one of the importan...
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 | FEATURED BOOK: Scaling Software Agility: Best Practices for Large Enterprises - by Dean Leffingwell
Scaling Software Agility, by Dean Leffingwell, is the book that all large company agilistas have been waiting for. First there was Ron Crocker's "Grizzly" method which was to be published in Large Scale Agile Development in 2004, but is still not released. Then came Jutta Eckstein's Agile in the Large, which dealt with large-projects and teams, but many critics felt it didn't quite scale up to large systems (and systems of systems) or address more enterprise-scale issues. ...
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Latest Issues of Agile Journal
Coming Up - Editorial Calendar
- August 13 - Quality Agile Development
- September 10 - Agile News
- October 08 - Valuable Agile Practices
- November 12 - Introducing Agile to the Organization
- December 10 - The State of the Agile Community
See the full 2008 Editorial Calendar >
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