Womens Hair Re Growth Rogaine Side Effects To Vytorin Lotrel Metformin Accutane After Before Sucralfate Taken With Nexium Hgh Weightloss Shots Can Prilosec Cure Ulcers Diamond Brite Louis Mo Celebrex And Canada Tramadol Is Prescribed For Bactroban Lowest Price Effexor Diary Ring Purim Online Card Music Free Melatonin And Zoloft Interaction Cymbalta Suicide 2006 Avandia Purchase Singulair Phone Cymbalta And Abilify Lexapro Klonopin Alcohol And Paxil Cr Avandia New England Journal Irina Allegra Viagra Next Day Shipping Tricor Pacific Capital Calcaulating Motrin Dose Base On Weight My Dog Ate Allegra D Information On Vytorin Effectiveness Of Diflucan Ventolin Package Insert Craftsman Brite Driver Parts Canada Coreg 25mg Picture Of Generic Nexium Solar Brite Abana Marietta Prosthetic Heart Valves And Coumadin Levels Drug Interactions With Lexapro Ibuprofen Motrin Rainbow Brite Dance Song What Does Synthroid Look Like Lexapro Tardive Dyskinesia Can You Take Celexa While Pregnant Actos Manufacturer Prednisone Use Medication Self-management Coumadin Gneric Viagra Lasix And Heart Surgery Zestril Lichenplanus Cla Supplement Danger Hoodia Bipolar Hoodia Case Studies Flomax For Kidney Stones

Agile is being adopted at a rapid pace and as of 2010 has become a de-facto standard for developing software. Methodologies like Scrum and Extreme Programming have proven easy to use at low cost and brought some immediate improvements in terms of better quality software and shorter time to market than ad-hoc development or plan-driven development. Success stories help hyping agile and most importantly developers enjoy working in agile environments. But as the quick wins from agile becomes the norm in the market, companies need to take the next step in order to reap the long-term benefits from becoming agile and responding to change in a controlled but quick manner. After all, putting business value into play when it’s needed is all that matters. To do so right, the organization needs to follow suit with the agile movement.

Agile focus is IT driven and tends to be technology-oriented, not business oriented
The latest focus in the agile community tends to go towards test or behavior driven development and tools for automated unit testing, in addition to ways of automated integration. These tools and practices help build qualitative software products quicker. They help improve the design of code and they make software more maintainable (if something’s broken with the software, you will know). However, this focus does not help the organization become more agile. In fact, it may even increase the distance between the “IT guys” and “the business”. If something goes wrong, the fingers will be pointing at each other across this gap.

Moving from Agile as a Project Methodology to Agile as a Company Business Methodology
Rather, it’s time for organizations to absorbe Agile to its fullest and stop thinking of it as some IT initiative. To do so, agile must be thought of as a way to deliver business value for the entire company, not just for a single project. For instance:

  • How can a company change the scope of one project based on the results of another independent project?
  • How can value driven from an external source empower other ongoing projects?
  • How can the same change be implemented across multiple projects?
  • Who has decision rights to change or halt multiple projects when the business case simply isn’t there any more?
  • How to mend one project when resources are reallocated to reinforce another ongoing initiative?
  • What is the quickest manner to reach the full potential of your new software?

In other words, to achieve full agility from IT a company must go from “we’re doing agile for our software development” to “we’re creating business value in an agile way”. That’s when Agility reach it’s fullest potential!

Optimize your Business Architecture and your Agile Governance model to improve Business Agility
There are two ways of getting there and both must be done in parallel:

  1. Have an agile business architecture where necessary tools and processes are integrated and standardized, leaving the business and IT with all means necessary to create business value. In other words, optimize and automate the business architecture to its fullest leaving all company assets to creating business value. Business architecture encompass technology, tools, processes and methodologies to support the business strategy.
  2. Empower, sustain and improve a clear agile governance. An agile organization, as agile development, depends on short feedback loops to deliver business value quickly, where self-organized teams are empowered to get the job done and the line from decision to implementation is short. This type of work demands a special type of governance. Agile governance states who has decision rights when it comes to project portfolio, business initiatives, technology & tools, feature prioritization and resource allocation. In addition to decision righs, who has input on what area? And how are decision areas monitored, for instance by the use of Key Performance Indicators? Transparency is important for agile governance: decision makers should have a clear picture of their responsibility area at any given time. Agile governance helps make quick but well supported decisions to respond at the pace the market demands.

Agile governance is stated to help scale agile across projects. It also helps closing the gap between IT and Business. It should be one step closer to deliver what Gartner calls Business Technology.