Tag: test

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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An Agile Approach To IT Governance

The demand for IT governance is increasing at a rate faster than the capability to govern IT is maturing. While greater scrutiny on spending and increased business regulation ratchets up pressure, IT management struggles even to come to consensus on a definition of what governance is and is not. Governance initiatives are typically little more than bureaucratic "bolt-ons" to monitor employee activity. The results speak for themselves: although it consistently appears as a top-10 priority for CIOs, only about 10 percent of CIOs report "very effective" governance, and nearly 60 percent report neutral or outright ineffective governance practices.[1]  To make governance effective, there must be a simple yet complete definition of governance that is results-oriented, inclusive of all IT activities, and non-burdensome to execute.

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