Abstract
Agile, originally derived in part from the manufacturing sector, has evolved into a set of principles and practices that have flourished within and found applications beyond the IT sector. Its adaptive, value-driven, collaborative and empowering essence drives innovation in an iterative and incremental manner that is founded upon organisational and experiential learning. Over time, many methodologies (e.g., XP, Scrum, DSDM, SAFe®) have become established reflecting different facets of Agile ranging from engineering, product development, project management and enterprise architectural perspectives all of which continue to be influenced by other developments (e.g., lean). Assessed in the sober light of day, however, Agile not only poses but also faces challenges within organisations that must question the role of existing structures and hierarchies, people factors together with their culture and processes that ultimately address the core nature and existence of the enterprise.
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- 1.
Although formulated in terms of software development, there is prevailing consensus amongst agile leaders that were the manifesto to be rewritten today then the word software would be replaced with solution.
- 2.
This approach to considering value is common in service delivery frameworks e.g., ITSM .
- 3.
Availability as a measure of fitness for use is of particular importance in service provision (e.g., SaaS).
- 4.
This definition of value is borrowed from the Management of Value framework which finds favour in traditional programme and project environments such as MSP®, M_o_R® and PRINCE2®.
- 5.
RAD was initially developed as RADical software development before becoming ASD.
- 6.
The portmanteau, Atern, is derived from the Artic tern whose characteristics reflect agile behaviour.
- 7.
Other certifications also exist albeit with less focus specifically on project management aspects such as the PMI-ACP® offered by the Project Management Institute.
- 8.
A business case is sometimes referred to as a “system metaphor” in XP or a “product vision” in Scrum.
- 9.
One very common phased model is the Software (or Systems) Development Lifecycle (SDLC) which refers to a generic model of software development comprising of phases broadly divided into the soliciting and management of requirements, technical analysis and design, implementation of software solutions, validation and verification of software artefacts and concludes with the deployment and maintenance of the software solution.
- 10.
The PRINCE2® project management methodology promotes the notion of “technical stages” that contain similar types of work (e.g., analysis, implementation).
- 11.
A common example of the reordering of activities is Test-driven Development that advocates the creation of acceptance tests before (rather than after) the solution has been developed.
- 12.
Kanban boards are referred to as Scrum-bans and Team Boards in Scrum and DSDM respectively.
- 13.
In organisational theory a group that perform a specific task is referred to as a function. If formally embedded into an organisational hierarchy then the term organisational unit might be more appropriate. Either way a role would not be ordinarily assigned collectively in the manner suggested by Scrum.
- 14.
Sometimes the function designation “The Team” is used.
- 15.
Scrum-ban is an adaptation of Scrum which includes a tracking practice borrowed from Kanban.
- 16.
Though DSDM is rich in advice and artefacts it is important to note that not everything is considered mandatory.
- 17.
In organisational theory a function denotes a team together with its resources that directed are towards specific processes and activities (e.g., release management).
- 18.
To what extent agile processes are truly malleable is a matter for debate. For example, methodologists of some of the mainstream product development and engineering have at various points in time insisted that nothing in the method ought to be compromised for the sake of the organisation.
- 19.
Non-linearity refers to a disproportionate behaviour between input and output that deviates significantly from linear relationships.
- 20.
Recurrency, after a number of transitions, refers to the return to a past state and reflects a structural feature of some complex adaptive systems.
- 21.
Emergent effects are beautifully visualised by Mandelbrot sets which arise from simple but non-linear mathematically transformations of sets. Indeed this is the essence of chaos theory (e.g., the “Butterfly effect”) which was very much in vogue when the agile manifesto was being formulated.
- 22.
Kaizen processes, originally developed as part of the Toyota Production System, help to identify and tackle the seven sources of waste (i.e., transportation, inventory, motion, waiting, over-processing, over-production and defects).
- 23.
The Five Whys technique repeatedly poses why questions as often as is necessary (the number five is merely indicative) to get to the root cause of a quality problem. In fact the term hansei (i.e., reflection) is used in this context to indicate the retrospective nature of the exercise.
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Moran, A. (2015). Introduction. In: Managing Agile. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16262-1_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16262-1_1
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