Home  Agile Journal Transitioning to Agile Processes - January 2008
TRANSITIONING TO AGILE PROCESS
Volume 3 Number 1 - January 2008
Happy New Year! We are looking
forward to a year of exciting initiatives in the Agile community. There are
some new products on the horizon as well as a proliferation of best practices
from industry experts. On our own home front, the Agile Journal will soon have
a new look and much broader set of resources and community services. In
addition, we welcome Kirk Knoernschild as our online editor. Kirk will work to
supplement the Agile Journal with additional content and resources, and work
with the broader Agile Journal community. Kirk is also a regular contributor to
the Agile Journal, writing articles for the "Agile Developer" column.
In this month's Agile Journal, we
take a look at issues common to many organizations: transitioning to Agile
processes from more traditional software development environments and the slew
of technical and managerial challenges that these transitions impose.
Mike Cohn shares some of the patterns
for Agile adoption that he has experienced with his many Agile consulting
clients. He explores the tradeoffs between starting small or going "all in;"
starting with specific technical practices or focusing on adopting iterative
cycles; and approaching early Agile development in stealth mode or with a
public display of agility. Ross Pettit considers a number of dichotomies that
teams face when adopting Agile processes: deciding whether to adopt few or many
practices at the beginning; helping skeptics versus passive-aggressive team
members to make the change; and determining whether transparency helps or
hinders team success.
There are also different ways to
approach change in specific phases of the life cycle. Guy Beaver proposes that
teams change the way they approach enterprise requirements, replacing
early detailed specification with solution roadmaps and leveraging lightweight
techniques such as index cards to create these roadmaps. Kirk Knoernschild has
opted to forego the typical New Year's resolutions and instead offers some
practical tips to help achieve team and personal agility.
Agile team members will approach
Agile transitions differently. Kelly Shaw coaches product development teams in
how to help their "pointy head bosses" make the transition to Agile
development. Vikas Hazrati defines a somewhat idealistic - yet potentially
very valuable - position on the team: the Agile Architect.
Please continue to share your advice
and experiences with the Agile Journal community and give us feedback on the
Agile Journal's new contents. If you'd like to contribute an article on an
upcoming topic, go to the "Letters to the Editor" in the forum at agilejournal.com
and send us your ideas.
Liz Barnett
Editor in Chief
This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
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Building an Agile Organization
Without highly-skilled team members, Agile teams will not succeed. This does not mean that organizations must to overhaul or outsource their existing staff. Rather, they must leverage the business and subject matter expertise within existing staff and teams, and provide the necessary technical and process training so that their staff can excel with Agile practices.
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Patterns of Agile Adoption
There are many ways to
transition to an agile process. Choosing the approach that is most likely to
work best for your organization can be critical to a smooth transition. Through
helping hundreds of teams make the transition to agile over the years, I have
identified six core patterns that teams use to initiate the transition to
agile. These patterns fall into three sets of opposing pairs. You should choose
the core pattern from each set that best suits your team or organization:
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The Dichotomy of Change
IT organizations face increasing pressure to reduce budgets, improve quality, and deliver more quickly. These business demands quickly come face-to-face with current IT practices: cumbersome requirements management, opaque project management, complex architectures, and lengthy testing cycles. Recognizing the need to be "more agile" in response to these pressures, IT teams are increasingly looking to Agile practices. Because they distill the essence of IT execution int...
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 | Moving to Agile: TO DOs for your Pointy Haired Boss
In a
recent Dilbert comic strip, Pointy Haired Boss (PHB) tells Dilbert and Wally
they will start using agile programming. He explains:
"[Agile programming] means no more
planning and no more documentation. Just start writing code and complaining."
All of us
who have made the transition from waterfall, RUP, or other gated process to
agile can chuckle at this definition. As few as five years back, agile was often
seen as a ‘license to hack' rather than a disciplined appro...
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 | The Challenge of Enterprise Requirements Management: Boosting Business Value with Index Cards
Defect reduction
through early and detailed requirements specification is a common outcome of
process improvement efforts in product development. Enterprise requirements management becomes a
specialization that requires expert business systems analysts to gather and
document specifications that are detailed, accurate, and complete. If we
apply Lean principles to the requirements gathering effort we see a backed up
queue. Working to "Eliminate Waste" is a fundamental premi...
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 | Resolve to Increase Agility
Last
year, I resolved that in 2007 I'd focus on the essential characteristics of
technology that help maximize the effectiveness of agile practices. Since about
90 percent of folks don't keep their resolutions throughout the year, I've
decided this year not to make any such promises. Instead, I'll let you make
your own resolutions this year, and will offer up a few tips that you might
want to consider seriously if you're interested in increasing your personal or
team&#...
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 | The Shiny New Agile Architect
Recently there has been a lot of talk on whether we need an Architect on agile teams or not. There have been never-ending discussions on various forums both inside organizations and out in the public questioning the value that an architect can bring to the agile project where the architecture evolves with every iteration. This has led many traditional Architects to scramble for cover and opened gates for a new breed of architect, the Agile Architect. The traditional ivory tower Architects are gr...
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| FEATURED BOOK |
 | FEATURED BOOK: The Art of Agile Development by James Shore and Shane Warden
This is
an amazing book! The
Art of Agile Development is nothing less than 10+ years' worth of agile
development experience distilled into a single compendium of practical insight
and mindful application of Agile practices and principles. James Shore and Shane Warden have succeeded
marvelously in doing exactly what they set out to do: "packed everything we
knew about the day-to-day practice of agile development into 400 pages ... to provide
a complete how-to guide and starter kit for ...
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Latest Issues of Agile Journal
Coming Up - Editorial Calendar
- April 08 - Tackling Tough Topics: Architecture,
Retrospectives, and Testing
- May 08 - Challenges with Distributed Agile
- June 08 - Tools for Successful Agile Projects
- July 08 - Best of the Agile Journal
See the full 2008 Editorial Calendar >
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