Here is an edited and abridged version of that conversation:

Where do you see the change from people doing Agile and thinking they understood it, to now? What do they have to take into consideration for this new modern era?

I have been in software development for almost 20 years, and it’s been an interesting evolution for me to watch what Agile meant maybe 15-20 years ago versus how it’s perceived today. I just remember back in the early days of some of the very first Agile transformations that I was part of, it was very much all about following a process and having fealty to specific frameworks, be it Scrum or Kanban or whatever the case might be. And the closer you were to perfection by following those frameworks, the closer you were to God, as it were, like the more Agile you could claim to be. 

And what we forgot in all of that was, of course, that the Agile values and principles don’t prescribe any particular framework or approach. You’re supposed to put people and interactions over tools and processes. Well, if you are enforcing processes and you’re asking people to interact via tools, that kind of defeats a lot of the very fundamental sort of values of Agile right from the get go.

We also have problems, in that a lot of people came into the industry, and maybe people who were not sufficiently trained or had enough experience in real, good Agile practices, and there was just a lot of bad, bad Agile out there. You know, people who got a two-day certificate stamped and said, hey, I’m going to come in and now enforce Scrum processes on this team and coach them to higher levels of agility, and that’s not a recipe for success.

This has been true of DevOps, value stream management, you you, these are just vague, non-prescriptive processes to follow. But nobody says you have to be doing X, Y and Z to be Agile, or be doing full DevOps, or be doing value stream. It’s kind of like, well, we’re just going to leave it up to you, adopt what you want, throw out what you don’t want, we don’t mean to be prescriptive. But, I think that has added to so much confusion in these markets over the years. So where we’re at now, and you’re talking about evolving into this modern era, what’s impacting it? Is it simply cloud-native computing? Is it AI? Is it all of the above? 

I feel like Agile reached this sort of peak, where people were finding that they weren’t really getting the value that had been promised as a part of an Agile transformation. They weren’t seeing the value for their customers, they weren’t seeing their value for their teams. And, you know, the house of cards started to fall apart a little bit. And let’s be honest as well, one of the things about Agile was you had to have co-located teams, so that’s one sacred cow that got sacrificed during Covid, because co-located teams just wasn’t a possibility, and we’re not in that world anymore. 

And honestly, from where I sit, Agile was invented to solve a very specific, defined problem within software development, which was software development delivery and making sure that you weren’t constantly missing deadlines, and that you were delivering the right level of value. And I think a lot of those problems have kind of been solved, and Agile has kind of expanded beyond the boundaries of just software development as well. And people are kind of seeing that it’s not one size fits all. It needs to be more adaptive. It needs to be more pragmatic and less prescriptive. 

And so that’s kind of where we are right now. I feel like where we’re in a period of retrenchment and reinvention of Agile. People are starting to see that prescriptive frameworks just aren’t going to work for them. And a lot of the customers that I talk to are evolving and coming up with their own sort of custom approach. And they’re maybe using different vocabulary, different language, but they’re still doing things that are Agile, but they’re just not recognizable to somebody 10-15 years ago.

You bring in cloud-native computing, where now you have a whole lot of moving parts, where it isn’t just a monolithic code base going through, but you’re calling APIs, you’re using Kubernetes, containers. And all of these complexities kind of change the looks of things, so how do those things affect the way that people have been doing Agile, and what adjustments have they had to make for those types of things?

I think they’ve kind of stepped away from prescriptive frameworks, and many times they’re just adapting. This is really, honestly what they should have been doing all along. You should have not been prescriptive, you should have been able to adapt your processes, and even if it’s not pure to the framework that you started with, it’s okay for you to move in that direction. So people are, I think, moving away from those defined roles that were part of those frameworks. I think that that’s probably a good thing. Rather than, you know, you’re a product owner or you’re a Scrum master, or all of those kinds of things, moving away from prescriptive titles I think is one thing that I’ve seen them do.

Also, working with tool sets that are less rigid and more flexible. So if you are trying to run everything within a very defined set of tools, and those tools define your workflow, that’s very constrictive, I feel like for a lot of a lot of companies and a lot of teams, and they’re trying to find a better way to organize themselves and to support their ways of working using more flexible tool sets.

How is AI impacting Agile development?

Well, you know, I would be lying if I could say that anybody knows the answer to that, right? We’re still in the very early days of that revolution. But some things that I can kind of see on the horizon as potential outcomes and potential impacts of AI are is it going to affect the team size? If you think about an Agile team generally, they used to prescribe that the ideal size is six plus or minus three, and you have to have these specific skill sets on it. Maybe team sizes are going to shrink a little, and you’re going to have maybe one or two developers on a team, and then they can orchestrate a series of AI agents that do a lot of the work that other specialists would have done in the past, like QA or specific database tasks or things like that. So I definitely think it’s going to affect the team composition, the team structure, and the team size. 

The other thing that I think it’s going to really impact as well is a lot of the monotony of some of the tasks that get done are probably going to be taken over by AI. And you see that across all industries, right? What does that mean? It means that it’s going to free up the really talented people on Agile teams to do sort of those higher level strategic thinking. You know, the things that AI can’t do yet. Maybe it’ll do it one day, but it can’t do it today where it’s thinking strategically and thinking about human dimensions of what they’re building and making sure that it’s being guided in that direction. The actual coding work or testing work will probably be taken over by some form of an AI, but we are going to have the ability to focus our efforts on those higher order or higher complexity activities. 

So you really have to prepare yourself individually. You have to bring your skill set up, and you also have to know how to work with an AI, because if those AIs are going to be your assistants, or they’re going to be an embedded part of your team, you have to know how to be able to orchestrate and run a series of AI agents that are going to get the work done that other human beings would have done before. So I really think that’s going to happen. What does that mean for Scrum masters specifically? I think Scrum masters, again, will have to evolve in a different direction and focus more on the human element. We’ve always said that Scrum masters are also Agile coaches, but we haven’t really taken that to heart. And I feel like that’s something that Scrum masters really need to embrace in this new era of being able to coach human beings and have high emotional intelligence. AI doesn’t have emotional intelligence. We do. So we need to be able to make sure that the human beings on our team are supported and have what they need to collaborate and to be successful, and then leave the drudgery to the AI.

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Previously, Rally was only available as a SaaS offering, but this new on-premises version is designed specifically to enable companies that operate globally to plan, prioritize, manage, track, and measure the value they are delivering to customers while still maintaining security and compliance. 

Rally Anywhere provides data sovereignty, meaning that data stays within the physical borders of where it originated, which allows companies to comply with international data protection regulations and alleviate data residency concerns.

It also provides the flexibility and scalability that is necessary for teams that are split up across multiple time zones and geographic locations to work together collaboratively. 

According to Broadcom, with this announcement, the company’s entire ValueOps Value Stream Management Solution is now available as either a SaaS or on-premises option. 

“We are committed to empowering enterprise teams with the tools they need to succeed, and Rally Anywhere exemplifies this commitment. With its focus on enterprise security, data sovereignty, and support for global value streams, we are confident that this new product will be a game-changer for organizations looking to elevate their collaborative efforts while maintaining control and security,” said Serge Lucio, general manager of the Agile Operations Division at Broadcom.

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You’ll find excuses, like “Oh, I’ll get back to it later,” or “Come on, it’s half a point; everyone knows what to do”. Don’t do it.

Realize as you spout these self-platitudes that you are being an arse – not to me, but to future-you and future-you’s team. That’s not cool. Write out the story. It’ll take you two minutes, but it’ll force you to think about what you actually want to get out of this effort and why. That’s rather important in most endeavors.

You only talk at stand-up

I once worked at a job like this and quit after about three months because it was utterly soul-destroying. Most humans want to work in a team, so find a way to work as one. Giving a two-minute, fact-based update in a 15-minute meeting once a day doesn’t cut it, and you risk losing half/all of your team who feel isolated.

Communication is hard. So is software development. So, the idea that we all wander off into our silos for 24 hours once standup is done, and nothing will still be unclear, hard or confusing in the meantime, is just plain silly.

If your team isn’t talking a lot during the day, it might mean they’re all super-humans. Or, more likely, your culture is bad, and they’re afraid or unwilling to communicate. 

Some things that I’ve seen work well to overcome this are Perma-calls, Kick-off chats and setting clear expectations for what junior devs should do when blocked.

Planning sessions of 2.5 hours

Your workload is not an impossible-to-plan anomaly. You do not need several hours to agree on what is coming into the sprint for the next week or two. What is actually happening is that you’re doing planning wrong. 

Instead of a chat that sounds like, “Let’s do these {n} things in the sprint, any concerns/emergencies/issues?” – what is almost definitely happening is that you’re discovering a bunch of new information in the planning session, which is leading to a re-refinement (or first refinement if you’re terrible) of the work.

Instead, do refinements. I won’t go into how to do a refinement; go Google it/read this link. But please do them. One of the hardest parts of Agile development is getting what to work on (and why) properly defined for the whole team. Focus on “defined and aligned.” If your team hasn’t defined what success means and aren’t all in agreement, the story shouldn’t be in planning. Send it back to the refinement stage.

PM-&-lead-only work-scoping

Delegation is easy, but it’s the thing I see most people screw up most often, myself very much included. But it must be overcome if you want a team to get good at planning, scoping and estimating work.

To be explicit:

• Everyone in the team should be involved in scoping out tickets before the refinement.
• Everyone in the team should be actively involved in the refinement session itself.

When teams don’t do this, they’re missing out on a bunch of things such as experience gained for junior devs, seniors learning to better explain and share their thoughts and helping the team internalize the code as something that they own.

Delaying releases until all the stories are done

If you’re not delivering “continuously”, then please go back to 2003. We’re not FTPing our files onto production servers for a deployment process.

The faster you integrate code (i.e. make it part of the main branch) the earlier your team is discovering differences with the code they’re writing. The longer this time-to-integrate is, the further things will have diverged, and thus, the more time will be wasted picking it apart.

The faster you deploy your code, the quicker your work is getting out to your customers, and the sooner you’ll know (if you have a robust error monitoring setup at least) whether you’ve introduced a new bug as part of the work, meaning the time-to-fix is vastly reduced. A nice side benefit is that the less that has been queued up to deploy, the smaller the “deploy diff” will be. That’s going to make it a heck of a lot easier to fix, in my experience.

Bad excuses I’ve heard over the years as to why you can’t do this include, ‘it takes up too much time’ (deploying should be a click of a button), ‘It’s not all ready yet’ (meaning you’re planning your work wrong) or we’re not allowed to because of “X regulation.” For the latter, read The Phoenix Project for some good lessons on how to address concerns here.

Caveat: Sometimes it’s physically not possible to do regular deployments, like if you’re writing software for a cruise missile. But otherwise, if SpaceX can deliver software to their satellites every week, you can do continuous delivery, mate.

We’ll add the tests later

Add them now or admit (ideally in a signed pact with the devil, written in your firstborn’s blood) that you just don’t care about whether your code works or not.

I suspect that if I have to argue this point further, then you’re already too far gone to be saved, but put succinctly-ish: untested code is code that probably doesn’t work. It’s impossible to know if it does work because the tests that should describe the functionality aren’t there. It’s also impossible to change because you don’t know what you’re breaking when you change it. Untested code is immediately legacy code that must either be immediately fixed (with tests) or completely replaced.

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This is according to Digital.ai’s 17th annual State of Agile report, which surveyed 788 software developers. In comparison, 43% of medium and large businesses say that Agile works very or somewhat well (a 9% difference from small businesses). 

The report found that in general only 11% of respondents using Agile are “very satisfied” with their results and 33% are “somewhat satisfied.”

Large businesses are also struggling to scale their Agile practices, citing challenges such as AI transformations, developer burnout, hybrid work environments, and changing business priorities. 

Thirty percent of respondents say they are exploring using LLMs or AI-based code assistants, whether by their development teams or actually integrating them into their services. About 22% of respondents are experimenting with AI, 17% are in the initial stages, 13% don’t believe anyone in their organization is using AI yet, and 8% have been explicitly told not to use it. 

Despite Agile not working perfectly for everyone at this point, overall it is providing benefits to the companies that have implemented it. Sixty percent of respondents said they have improved collaboration, 57% say they are more closely aligned with business needs, and 25% say they are delivering more quality software. 

“What’s clear from the data is that, when Agile works, it works – there are concrete benefits for the organizations who have gotten it right,” said Derek Holt, CEO of Digital.ai. “AI is the latest disruptive change to businesses, and like any change, it alters processes and practices that will take time to assimilate, but the enterprise goal remains the same – to satisfy the hunger to deliver business value and drive customer satisfaction. Agile still provides us with the best opportunity to manage these transitions and drive software delivery toward maximum business value.”

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Project estimation offers transparency regarding resource prerequisites, allowing managers to assess the viability of initiating and concluding a project within predetermined schedules. 

This pivotal process involves the meticulous prediction of essential factors, including resource allocation, project duration, and associated costs. In this article, we delve into the core concept of software project estimation, emphasizing its importance in the technology sector and its fundamental role in software development.

At its core, software project estimation is both an art and a science. It serves as an indispensable tool for project managers, developers, and stakeholders, guiding them through the intricate process of software development. By leveraging estimation, teams can navigate a clearer path to project completion, efficiently manage workflows, and set well-defined expectations.

The Significance of Software Development Estimation

First and foremost, software development estimation provides a roadmap to predictability, as it offers a clear, well-defined path for the development team and stakeholders. This clarity is not merely advantageous; it is essential for informed decision-making, realistic expectations, and prudent resource allocation.

Software development estimates serve as guardians of risk management. In an industry rife with inherent uncertainties, these estimates function as early warning systems, identifying potential pitfalls and enabling proactive risk mitigation. When surprises are minimized, and contingency plans are in place, project teams can navigate the challenges of software development with confidence.

Furthermore, the application of software development estimates is vital for budgetary purposes. By providing a comprehensive view of expected costs, these estimates assist organizations in allocating financial resources effectively, preventing budget overruns and financial strain.

The Superiority of the Agile Approach in Estimation

The Agile approach has emerged as a beacon of innovation and adaptability in the realm of software development. It shines brightly in the context of software project estimation, and for good reason. Agile’s intrinsic flexibility and iterative nature make it exceptionally well-suited for accurate and dynamic project estimation. 

This approach acknowledges the fluidity of software development. Unlike traditional Waterfall methodologies, which aim to plan every aspect of a project up front, Agile embraces change. It divides projects into manageable iterations, allowing for ongoing adjustments and refinements as requirements evolve. This adaptability is invaluable when making accurate estimates in an environment where change is constant.

The Agile life cycle places a strong emphasis on collaboration and transparency. This approach fosters a shared understanding of project objectives, priorities, and potential challenges among team members and stakeholders. This shared understanding leads to more accurate estimation, drawing upon the collective knowledge and expertise of the team to ensure that estimates are grounded in real-world insights.

Lastly, Agile estimation often employs relative estimation techniques such as story points or planning poker. Instead of attempting to estimate absolute timeframes, these techniques focus on comparing the complexity and effort required for different tasks relative to one another. This relative estimation method tends to be more accurate and less time-consuming than attempting to estimate in absolute terms, which can be challenging in the dynamic world of software development.

The 7 Key Steps of Software Project Estimation: An In-Depth Overview

Let’s delve into the fundamental steps of software project estimation.

Step 1. Define the Project Scope

The journey of software project estimation commences with a comprehensive understanding of the project’s scope. This involves defining project objectives, identifying the target audience, and specifying the features and functionalities to be included. A clear and well-documented project scope serves as the basis for all subsequent estimation efforts.

Step 2. Gather Detailed Requirements

Once the project scope is established, you’ll have to gather comprehensive requirements. This entails engaging with stakeholders, end-users, and subject matter experts to compile an exhaustive list of specifications. Thoroughness in this phase is essential, as missing or misunderstood requirements can lead to significant discrepancies in the final estimate.

Step 3. Task Breakdown

With a solid understanding of the project’s scope and requirements, it is imperative to break down the project into manageable tasks or work packages. This granular approach allows for a more accurate assessment of the effort required for each component of the project. Common techniques for task breakdown include Work Breakdown Structures (WBS) and User Story Mapping.

Step 4. Estimate Effort and Duration

Estimating the effort required for each task is a critical step in software project estimation. This estimation often involves assigning numerical values, such as hours or story points, to tasks. Teams can employ various estimation techniques, such as expert judgment, historical data analysis, or parametric estimation models, to arrive at these values. Additionally, estimating the duration of each task or work package is essential to create a realistic project timeline.

Step 5. Account for Risks and Uncertainties

No software project is devoid of risks and uncertainties. Therefore, it is crucial to identify potential risks and uncertainties that may impact the project’s progress and adjust the estimates accordingly. This step involves risk analysis, contingency planning, and factoring in additional time or resources to mitigate unforeseen challenges.

Step 6. Validate and Review Estimates

Software project estimation is not a one-time task but an iterative process. It is essential to validate and review the estimates with key stakeholders, including the development team, project managers, and clients. Feedback and insights from these stakeholders can help refine the estimates and ensure that they align with project objectives.

Step 7. Document and Communicate Estimates

The final step in the software project estimation process involves documenting and communicating the estimates clearly and transparently. A well-documented estimation report should include details about the assumptions made, the methodology employed, and any risks or uncertainties identified. Effective communication with all project stakeholders ensures alignment and fosters realistic expectations.

The post Mastering Project Estimation: A Complete Guide appeared first on SD Times.

This AI assistant, trained using a comprehensive dataset, provides operational insights in Portfolio Management, Value Stream Management, and Agile Planning and Delivery. It aims to expedite data-driven strategic decision-making through a conversational interface.

“As organizations embark on a growing number of digital transformation initiatives while leveraging a plethora of tools to execute them, there is a tremendous opportunity to reimagine how smarter decisions can be made to accelerate business outcomes,” said Razat Gaurav, CEO at Planview. “Planview Copilot leverages all the relevant data across project and product initiatives and brings insights, decision support, and actions through a simple, conversational interface. This is an important evolution in our journey from being a system of record to becoming a system of insights for digital transformations.”

Planview Copilot distinguishes itself by utilizing a vast range of operating data sources that are not accessible to other AI assistants. This includes exclusive strategy-to-delivery data from Planview’s portfolio planning, enterprise agile planning, and delivery solutions. It also incorporates broader data from various team tools through over 60 of Planview’s connectors in the Flow Fabric. 

It can also access an organization’s past and present initiative data. By combining this data with methodologies like Planview’s Flow Methodology and Agile Principles, Planview Copilot has the capability to coach and mentor users, helping them identify and address bottlenecks throughout the entire strategy-to-execution process.

“Building the future of connected work starts with a deep, insightful understanding of how our customers deliver services, launch products, and successfully implement their strategies,” said Richard Sonnenblick, chief data scientist at Planview. “That understanding begins with customer data: We apply AI and machine-learning methods to each customer’s current and historical operational data to predict task completion, provide early warning about tasks requiring course correction, and highlight disconnects between strategic goals and in-flight activities. Through Planview Copilot, generative AI is the icing on the cake, offering an easy-to-use, conversational gateway to these sophisticated AI/ML insights.”

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Flow metrics can enable companies to determine if all of that orchestration is actually running through the process, and if the company is being efficient in its processes. Ultimately, it can help the company determine if it is realizing value and better understand how to get that value into the hands of customers sooner.

“It’s great that we have these ideas, but how do we actually close the loop and take it down to the end,” said Hersh Tapadia, co-founder and CEO at value stream intelligence company Allstacks. The flow metrics, he said, “are closing the loop. It’s realizing the dream, as we might say.”

This article was first published on VSM Times. Read the full article there.

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Since that fateful night, this methodology has become a stronghold of software development. In Digital.ai’s most recent State of Agile report, 94% of respondents were practicing Agile, and 32% have been doing so for at least 5 years. 

The original Agile Manifesto contained a list of four values:

1. “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
2. Working software over comprehensive documentation
3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
4. Responding to change over following a plan”

In recent years, one of the biggest shifts in how companies practice Agile is, unsurprisingly, having to accommodate a whole new style of working. According to Digital.ai’s survey, only 3% said they planned to return to the office full time. 25% said they will remain fully remote and 56% will use a hybrid approach where people will be in the office some of the time, but not all. 

“In last year’s survey we found fewer who are completely remote than planned, but still about half of respondents are mostly remote,” said Wing To, vice president of engineering for value stream delivery platform & DevOps at Digital.ai. “Expect some adjustments over the next few years as leaders try different approaches.” 

According to Aaron Morris, owner of the educational platform agile-innovations.tech, the early days of Agile required teams to be located in the same place because there would need to be a daily stand-up meeting and a shared board to track sprints, which was often just a whiteboard on a wall. 

“Since then, technology has advanced so much that distributed teams are no longer a big deal.  Stand-up meetings happen over MS Teams or Zoom, and the team board is hosted in a shared cloud app like Jira,” said Morris. “I once worked on a team where our developers were distributed across Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Brazil, Turkey, and Russia…but we worked from the same sprint board and met every day at 10am Eastern.”

So, while the Agile Manifesto may favor “individuals and interactions over processes and tools,” tools have become quite a necessity to facilitate the communication and collaboration needed to do Agile correctly these days. 

“Communication is important,” said Raveesh Dewan, CEO of Joget, an open-source low-code platform. “Not just verbal, but what you are doing in the tools is equally important.”

Dewan’s team is fully remote, so it’s absolutely crucial that everyone is providing updates into the tools so that everyone is on the same page and they can track progress. An example he gave is if there are 10 user stories on your plate and you have only finished five within the planned time frame, then you have a better sense of the actual velocity of the project. 

“That’s pretty much it, there is no rocket science behind it, there is no mantra behind it that ‘thou shalt do it this way.’ It is just a matter of being disciplined and making sure that I have given my updates today,” he said.

According to Digital.ai’s survey, the most common types of tools that people use include Kanban boards, taskboards, spreadsheets, agile project management tools, bug trackers, and wikis. 

Popular tools to use for Agile include Atlassian Jira, Azure DevOps, Broadcom Rally, Trello, and even just Google Docs. According to the survey, 48% of respondents are using Google Docs for Agile planning. 

It’s also important to keep the people aspect front and center when working remotely. For example, Yemisi Iyilade, product management coach and educator, said that at her company there is a rule to always have your camera on. She believes there’s a lot of communication that happens just in your body language, and you would miss out on that if you were only communicating through voice. 

“Even if your little child is there, it’s okay … because we understand that you are a person before your work,” she said. 

Speaking on the importance of people, she also highlighted that it’s important that all employees feel appreciated and valued. This can be accomplished through regular one on one meetings. 

Another thing many companies do to accomplish this is to provide flexibility around work hours. “Some companies now have a few hours in the day as mandatory hours,” she said. “This means that those are the only hours, maybe four hours out of the seven or eight hours, that you are mandated to be online. The other hours, you can spread it according to your own personal day.”

Agile moves beyond software development

While Agile was originally developed as a way to improve software development, it’s actually moving out of software development teams and all sorts of business teams are experimenting with and using Agile. 

According to the Digital.ai survey, 86% of respondents used Agile in their software development teams. But 63% use it in IT, 29% use it in operations, 17% use it in marketing, 17% use it in security, 16% use it in human resources, 11% use it in sales, and 10% use it in finance. And 52% say that a majority of their company’s teams have adopted Agile.   

Morris explained that for quite a long time, Agile was viewed suspiciously by business managers, especially in regulated industries. He recounted how when he was first starting out as a developer, he worked for a medical device company and his team spent six months persuading their manager to let them even try a few Scrum sprints. 

“Now, agile development is a common practice in most industries,” he said. “And even in regulated industries—where waterfall development is still king—there’s a strong movement towards agile, and much fewer people view it with the same suspicion as 10+ years ago.”

Encourage a culture of failure

Another side effect of the COVID-19 pandemic is the need to be ready to innovate, always. This includes encouraging a culture of failure, according to Iyilade.

This doesn’t mean that you necessarily want things to fail, but that you want to be able to try new things without the fear of failure. 

“The reality is innovation is saying ‘we don’t know how to do this. Let’s try. And we tried it, and this is what we got. And it’s okay. The next time we’ll do it better, doesn’t mean we failed. It means we’ve learned something new,’” she said.

As an example, Iyilade said to imagine a team that wants to develop a dashboard to view the status of a project or product. The first iteration may have a bit of risk associated with it, but by the second iteration, the team has learned from whatever went wrong on the first try and can do those things differently on the next go. 

“We want to focus on the new learnings, the creative ideas that just came out, the new knowledge that came out,” she said. 

The emergence of value stream management

Another methodology that has sprung up in the past few years that ties in nicely with Agile is value stream management.

According to Cameron van Orman, chief strategy officer at Planview, value stream management is important because it provides a holistic view of the whole value chain and can help identify areas that could be improved. 

It can be used to help create a culture of transparency, break down silos, and align business goals. 

“With a focus on delivering value to customers and shifting from project to product, the entire organization can work towards a common goal and align business objectives. As Agile continues evolving and gaining popularity, organizations must continuously refine their Agile practices to meet changing circumstances,” he said.  

According to van Orman, newer Agile frameworks like the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) work well with value stream management too. He said that combined, they offer “a solid foundation for organizations to succeed in remote and hybrid environments.”

Low-code and Agile make a perfect pair

As mentioned earlier, the first value of the original Agile Manifesto of “individuals and interactions over processes and tools,” has sort of fallen off. Low-code is another example of this, as it really enables people to think in a more Agile way and promotes experimentation.

According to Dewan, the ability to quickly drag and drop components enables you to go faster and try more things out. 

“Low-code takes it to a different level because it makes everything visual,” he said. “You can drag and drop while collaborating, while having the conversation, so cycles of iterations go faster.”

This iterative approach with low-code becomes even more powerful when combined with fusion teams: separate teams in the business working with IT. “It can quickly show them these are the options, and iterate through those options much faster than traditional application development,” said Dewan.

The post Tools are now critical to implementing Agile successfully appeared first on SD Times.

ValueOps by Broadcom Software delivers on the promise of value stream management (VSM) as the first to combine business and investment-oriented product management with advanced, operationally-focused agile planning and management capabilities. The integration of Broadcom’s proven Clarity and Rally Software Agile management products enables every role within an enterprise to fund, manage, track and analyze unified value streams with a consistent value orientation and methodology. Combining these leading-edge products as one comprehensive VSM solution delivers crucial insights tailored to meet the needs and requirements of each discipline. It aligns teams across the enterprise, increasing alignment, reducing inefficiencies, and improving time to value.

Atlassian offers Jira Software, a software development tool used by agile teams. As an agile project management tool, it helps teams plan, track and move work forward. Atlassian’s Jira Align extends the power of teams working in Jira by connecting business strategy to technical execution while providing real-time visibility at enterprise scale. It allows enterprises to aggregate team-level data and makes all work visible across the organization in real-time.

Azure DevOps is Microsoft’s suite of DevOps tools designed to help teams collaborate to deliver high-quality solutions faster. Agile teams can utilize the solution to plan, track and discuss work as well as use Scrum-ready and Kanban-capable boards. Other features include Azure Pipelines for CI/CD initiatives; Azure Boards for planning and tracking; Azure Artifacts for creating, hosting and sharing packages; Azure Repos for collaboration; and Azure Test Plans for testing and shipping.

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ConnectALL: ConnectALL is a value stream management company dedicated to helping customers achieve higher levels of agility, traceability, predictability and velocity. ConnectALL’s services and solutions help organizations to connect people, processes and technology across the software development and delivery value stream, enabling companies to align digital initiatives to business outcomes and improve the speed at which they deliver software. ConnectALL’s value stream management platform allows companies to see, measure and automate their software delivery value streams. 

Digital.ai is a leading platform provider for Value Stream Management, Agile planning, DevOps and source code management. Its offerings provide global enterprise and government industry leaders a cohesive solution that enables them to ideate, create and orchestrate the flow of value through continuous delivery pipelines with measurable business outcomes. 

GitLab is a single application built from the ground up for all stages of the DevOps lifecycle for Product, Development, QA, Security, and Operations teams to work concurrently on the same project. Agile teams can use GitLab to plan and manage projects with features like issue tracking and boards, task lists, epics, roadmaps, labels, and burndown charts. GitLab supports SAFe, Spotify, Disciplined Agile Delivery and more. 

Micro Focus ALM Octane is an enterprise DevOps Agile management solution designed to ensure high-quality app delivery. It includes Agile tools for team collaboration, the ability to scale to enterprise Agile tools, and DevOps management.

The Perforce Helix ALM suite provides end-to-end traceability across the life cycle. It includes modules dedicated to requirements management, test case management and issue management. In addition, it works with popular Agile methodologies like Scrum, Kanban and XP and supports traditional methodologies such as waterfall. 

Planview’s Enterprise Agile Planning solution enables organizations to adopt and embrace Lean-Agile practices, scale Agile beyond teams, practice Agile Program Management, and better connect strategy to Agile team delivery while continuously improving the flow of work and helping them work smarter and deliver faster. With Planview, choose how you want to scale and when. We’ll help you transform and scale Agile on your terms and timeline.

Plutora: Plutora ensures alignment between software development and business strategy and provides visibility, analytics and insights into the entire value stream. Plutora ensures governance and management across the entire portfolio by orchestrating release pipelines, managing hybrid test environments, and orchestrating complex application deployments.

The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is the leading framework for scaling Agile across the enterprise. It is designed to help businesses deliver value on a regular and predictable schedule. It includes a knowledge base of proven principles and practices for supporting enterprise agility. 

Targetprocess: To connect portfolio, products and teams, Targetprocess offers a visual platform to help you adopt and scale Agile across your enterprise. Use SAFe, LeSS or implement your own framework to achieve business agility and see the value flow through the entire organization.

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On top of that, all signs seem to be pointing to a recession in the US economy, which could lead to slashed budgets, layoffs, and a lot of uncertainty. A number of tech firms have already begun laying off workers, including those from their development and IT teams. 

Companies will be relying on the processes they have in place to make it through these times, and an important one to practice will be Agile. Agile enables development teams to do more with less because they focus on the work that matters and are able to eliminate unnecessary work that doesn’t help their customer or add value to the business. 

RELATED CONTENT: A guide to Agile tools

“This is the only way to avoid building stuff that is not necessary,” said Diego Lo Giudice, VP principal analyst for research firm Forrester. “And therefore the concept of minimum viable product, minimizing the product features and focusing on the ones that you really want is the best optimal way to deal with lower budgets … That minimum viable product concept helps with focusing and spending the money in the right way, for those that understand it.”

Laureen Knudsen, chief transformation officer at Broadcom, explained that the idea of ‘doing more with less’ maxed out about 10 or 15 years ago. Companies cannot place more work on fewer developers and expect good results. 

“There is no more space in our people’s schedules in which to do more. The focus needs to be on eliminating the waste to free up space so we can focus on creating more value. We need to stop looking at how to be more efficient and look at how we can be more effective,” said Knudsen. 

Though Agile is rather widely practiced at this point in time, there are still those who have yet to successfully implement it. But as 2020 showed us, people make a lot of changes when they are under pressure to do so. Think of all the changes companies had to quickly figure out in 2020: remote work, online ordering of things that didn’t have that type system in place before, and more. 

“What I saw during the pandemic is that companies that were not adopting it, they started adopting Agile because it was the only way for their distributed teams to do something,” said Lo Giudice. 

Another recession is an example of a pressure that could inspire companies to either rethink their Agile practice or adopt new parts of it they weren’t really practicing before. 

Lo Guidice also added that at Forrester their number one inquiry for the last year for the application development and delivery team has been on scaling agile. Scaling agile is something that interests companies more than other hot topics like citizen development or cloud. 

Value stream management ties multiple Agile units together

Knudsen also explained that Agile is no longer just practiced by development teams. Over the past two decades it has been spreading into other areas of business.

She said that newer companies who were born in this fully digital era don’t have any areas of the business that aren’t lean. But more established companies tend to have trouble keeping up, and she said they won’t keep pace unless they get over the idea that agility and lean principles are only for development teams.

She added that value stream management comes into play here as it allows companies to incorporate different parts of the organization and focus them around customer value. 

Lo Giudice explained that value stream management is important even if Agile has not made its way out of development. For example, for companies that have broken their development teams up into much smaller units, it can be difficult to have an idea of the investments that are being made and what impact they are having once they’re in production. 

He explained that measuring value was much easier when 200 people were all working on the same siloed app together. 

“What we need to do now is bring that simplicity back,” said Lo Giudice. “That doesn’t mean going back to siloed apps, but it means having practices, tools and technologies to help have that vision again, of where the investments that are made are generating value, and where there are impediments, and that’s what I think value stream management is going to do.”

Challenges still exist

Despite the age and prevalence of Agile as a methodology, there are still challenges that organizations run into.

One big challenge that Knudsen sees is companies not seeing their business as a system. 

“You cannot change part of the system and expect that change to have a great impact,” said Knudsen. “We still see companies pitting departments against each other using management by objectives (MBOs) of leaders, with a mistaken belief that internal competition is a good thing. It can be, but not if part of your system loses in the process. Today, those that can pivot and change to take advantage of opportunities that arise are the ones that will have success in the future.  And to do that, work, data, and funding needs to flow through your entire organization, not just your development teams.”

Another challenge is related to the process of scaling agile. According to Knudsen, companies that have a lack of understanding of agility in the first place will struggle to scale it. 

Of the companies she has seen struggle the most to scale, one common factor is that they didn’t implement agility well in the first place.

She believes in addition to having disciplined agile practices, solid automation, and infrastructure, it’s important to have an aligned understanding of how work will be planned, performed, tracked, and measured. 

“Most leaders can’t even tell me their definition of done or their release criteria,” said Knudsen. “The most successful companies scale agility through the entire organization using value streams.”

The three biggest challenges Lo Giudice sees in his research include:

1. A lack of product ownership
2. A lack of strong change management
3. A lack of commitment of product owners from the business

“When I hear these inquiries around projects going from project to product, of course they’re trying to overcome some of these challenges,” said Lo Giudice. 

AgileThought releases new Agile guides

AgileThought recently announced the release of eight technology guilds that are aimed at enabling businesses to accelerate their digital transformations through Agile. 

The guilds are groups that have domain experience that work cross-functionally in teams called Agile Squads. The eight guilds include:

1. Data and AI
2. Enterprise Solutions
3. Front-end Engineering
4. Cloud Platforms and Back-end Engineering
5. Quality
6. Design and Product
7. Cloud Operations and Cybersecurity
8. Agility

According to AgileThought, for companies to successfully keep up in times of rapid change, they need to have both expertise and an agile culture that can quickly adopt new technologies. 

“The rapidly changing digital market has provided a need for companies to react more quickly to transform their business while continuing to provide increasing value for their customers. Through our Guilds, we are bringing our business and technology experts, proven agile methodology, and customer-first approach to deliver at a rapid pace to our clients every day. This framework will also provide high-growth career paths for our employees and help deliver on the latest digital trends and innovations for our clients,” said Alejandro Manzocchi, chief delivery officer and chief technology officer at AgileThought. 

How does Broadcom help companies practice Agile?

Laureen Knudsen, chief transformation officer at Broadcom

“Broadcom leverages its enterprise-class Agile Management SaaS platform to help organizations scale Agile across the enterprise. Our ValueOps platform includes the proven Rally Software® which enables organizations to plan, prioritize, manage, track, and continuously improve work so they can deliver the value that their customers need with speed, quality, and efficiency. It also provides visibility into progress, roadblocks, and dependencies across multiple teams, projects, and programs. This allows organizations to align strategic goals to the work and create better business results—and do it all in a single system of record. It also supports hybrid methodologies and is flexible enough to allow teams to work the way they want to work. We also have a variety of services and transformation assistance to help organizations on their Agile and/or Value Stream Management journey.”

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