Sunday, March 30, 2014

Agile Suitability

From mind shift to culture fit, Agile suitability is multi-faceted assessment and multi-dimensional conversation.

Agile is on demand more than ever. The face and pace of digital enterprise is mainly dependent on SMAC (social media, mobile computing, digital platform, cloud computing) etc. All they need are faster, better, simpler IT-enabled business solutions with high user experience. But the question is how to determine that particular project is suitable for agile or not?



There are multiple approaches, frameworks available to help teams identify the agile suitability for particular projects. Organizations can use "all agile some of the time" and "some agile all of the time" on projects delivery journey to ensure the project success and customer satisfaction. Certainly agile helps meet these objectives, the point is how to get agile understood, adopted in right way (the agile way) on right projects. Here are Agile suitability “formulas”:
-Project size and complexity = smaller, less complex
-Customer availability =Available frequently thorough out project
-Integration with external systems = simple or no integration
-Customer tolerance for scope and cost = Flexible budget and scope tuning allowed
-Time to market = partial deployment is allowed, exposure of solution in parts
-Client readiness for Agile = Client understands Agile well

The lightweight factors to be considered for Agile suitability: Quality, due to the fact that quality related practices are built in right from the beginning of the development cycle, and also because of the automation testing practices. The following is the minimal and lightweight factors to be considered for suitability of agile. If all of the following factors tending towards higher side of scale 1 to 5 (1- small, 2 to 3- medium, 4-5 – Large), then true agile or blended agile looks like suitable.
· Project Uncertainty
· Customer Responsiveness
· Complexity
· Urgency
· Risks
· Dynamism (Like hood of changes)
· Novelty ( Innovative Culture)

The theoretical fit and practical fit are often quite different. At the end of the day, Agile is a mindset change and it has to do with a change in human behavior. Change in the choices is what a developer / tester / any other role takes every day during his or her work every minute. The theoretical fit and practical fit are often quite different. The above factors and logic is a simple tool and not a replacement for thought and dialog with the project stakeholders.

The agile suitability assessment can be used to start conversations about agile suitability and build consensus around the method of choice. From mind shift to culture fit, Agile suitability is multi-faceted assessment and multi-dimensional conversation.






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