PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD
PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD Agile software development gives organizations the ability to respond quickly and accurately to business changes, new regulations and fresh opportunities. Yet in a world where developers can be scattered across time zones and nations, it can be challenging for organizations to track projects to ensure they are on time, on budget and on target.
In fact, about two-thirds of global organizations manage software development teams that work in multiple locations, according to the 2010 IBM Global CEO Study, which surveyed more than 1,500 CEOs from 60 countries and 33 industries. Their IT counterparts are focused on enhancing their internal collaboration and client interactions, found the 2011 IBM Global CIO Study. In fact, almost 75 percent expect changes to their internal collaboration process will have “high transformative potential” for their organizations, the report said. Almost as many CIOs agreed that changes in the way they interact with clients are high-impact initiatives, the survey found.
To accomplish these improvements, organizations must manage complexity, IBM said. In fact, IBM plans to streamline many of its processes, wrote Jeanette Horan, vice president and CIO at IBM, in the report.
“Another strategic goal is to radically simplify IBM. So there is a continual focus on eliminating, simplifying, standardizing and automating work that prohibits integration or adds complexity. By 2015, we plan to cut in half our number of enterprise applications,” said Horan. “Other key objectives are to dramatically improve cycle times and reduce transaction costs across the company with leaner, more agile processes. And to manage it all, we use dashboards to manage for business outcomes by providing a real-time view of the status of the business, from finance to infrastructure.”
Like a growing number of organizations, IBM is using agile software development to help accomplish its goals. IBM Rational’s agile solution includes agile practices, process improvement services, training and mentoring services, and products that help companies effectively adopt and tailor agile strategies to meet the unique challenges faced by software delivery teams.
As adoption of agile software development increases, it’s imperative that organizations implement management and collaboration tools. After all, transparency throughout a project, from start to finish, is one component of agile development. Other modules include building projects around motivated people; providing them with the optimal environment, tools, and support, and trusting them to complete the tasks, according to the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. Agile software development also improves effectiveness and enables continuous improvements, said Dhaval Panchal, an agile coach, and Halim Dunsky, director of delivery excellence, at SolutionsIQ, during an online presentation.
The process and culture of agile software development reduces time-to-market (whether commercial or in-house) and can dramatically cut costs, said Walker Royce, vice president and Chief Software Economist, at IBM Rational during Innovate 2011 in Orlando. In fact, 40 percent of software development consists of expensive scrapping and reworking, he said in Channel Insider.
To reduce these costs, Rational developed Jazz, an open software development platform, designed to allow developers to quickly work together, across geographies and teams, said Gina Poole, vice president of marketing at the company.
With its social media platform designed specifically for project-management teams, Mendix is addressing these pain-points at midsize organizations, CEO Derek Roos told Smarter Technology. The product, called sprintr, was designed through the collaboration of IT and business decision-makers, he said. Mendix 3.0 helps teams plan, develop, deploy and manage custom applications that integrate with existing systems, the company said.
“What we’ve seen is that the [majority] of IT projects fail simply because business requirements change too quickly. There’s a different language. Processes are too rigid,” said Roos.
One way to improve that is to provide organizations with a solution that shortens the time to market. “How we do that is by providing a collaborative approach to gathering requirements and translating them into visual models that can be understood by business and IT professionals,” said Roos.
In traditional coding, a business group or user requests some software, and the development team writes it or sends it off-shore for coding. Once completed, the development team demonstrates it to the users—who often find certain capabilities or features missing. The process is repeated, adding weeks, months or, in the case of complex software, perhaps even years.
“Our view is, this is bizarre. If you want to automate the business process, it must be fast,” Roos said. “Our focus is on enabling both types of stakeholders with a common platform and a common language—a visual language—a modeling language in our case.”
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