http://www.rallydev.com/turbulent/au.html

Date:

Wednesday, December 17^th 2008

Time:

10am PT / 11am MT / 1pm ET

Speakers:

Tom Grant, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research
Richard Leavitt, EVP Marketing, Rally Software

The recent economic downturn has magnified already-growing pressures on development teams. Meeting the bottom line requires making good design decisions, delivering on time, and increasing the predictability of development—all good reasons to move to Agile development. But what are the sorts of projects that are most likely to maximize Agile benefits while minimizing the costs? Picking the right starting point will not only bring the benefits of Agile development earlier, but also make it easier to demonstrate these benefits to stakeholders in your organization.

Join Forrester Senior Analyst, Tom Grant, and Rally Software EVP of Marketing, Richard Leavitt, for this can’t-miss discussion. You will: Learn where to expect the maximum productivity benefits and cost savings while implementing Agile, and Discover which projects will have the most impact on your organization’s bottom line.

Q:  Here is a question around predictability. So predictability in short run makes sense - What about analysis of the "current" status and life-of-project predictability?

A:
Tom Grant, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research:  In working with many different companies, large and small, it makes me think about, what was it that most frustrated the relationship between the development team and executives.   It was around the executive’s inability to gage where exactly the project is.  What sort of decisions where being made that affected the ultimate output?  We had set some goals but maybe some design decisions changed over time.  In that sense, I think what Agile is doing is not just the individual sprints predictable.  To the extent where you can add up the individual sprints and see where the long term release is going to fall on the calendar which makes that more predictable.  Also, there is the element of predictability that comes when the stakeholder is involved.  Where they can look at what is coming through the development process and as I mentioned earlier to have earlier opportunities to evaluate and give feedback based on company priorities from the executives, and market feedback through marketing and sales.  In that sense you are making something that is a more predictable set of releases in the longer term.  Also, in terms of the parties that need to know this information, where is the roadmap headed beyond each individual release.

What strikes me often in companies who have adopted Agile is that they are more willing to move to a model where they are releasing often and getting a lot of feedback.  They are also increasingly more transparent to their customers in letting them know what they are doing.

Q:  Can / should agile be applied in the "enhancement" space?  Here is someone in an Enterprise IT organization aimed at keeping a finance company operational, not a monolithic product offering.  So much of their work is around enhancements across multiple applications.  What does adoption look like for an IT organization?  How is Agile best applied?

A:
Ryan Martens, CTO & Founder, Rally Software Development: I am not going to say there is one right way, though I have seen a number of organizations adopt it in this path. 

This path is that they tend to adopt it first in those software services that face customers and partners. These applications are providing value to the organization, or direct revenue to the organization.  The web groups tend to be the first ones to adopt it, because they are trying to compete and they are almost behaving like product organizations.  What happens when this goes on is that the web groups might be the first and then realize that need middle ware services from either the larger organization in IT or mainframe groups in IT to support them.  They tend to bring those people onto their team and one of the answers is that they then create monolithic product organizations within IT.  What happens when that process takes place is that the maintenance associated with those services then is owned by those teams so the enhancements teams get folded into almost product like teams.  That is certainly one way we have seen IT organization “eat” Agile.

We have also seen IT organizations come at it at just the opposite way.  Where an organization is driven in supporting big SAP implementations where SAP runs a lot of the infrastructure of their business.  Here they will actually pick up entire application areas and focus parts of IT on specific lines of business, and in essence creates almost line of business teams in the regard. Again we tend to see maintenance and operations capabilities fold into those organizations.

Tom Grant, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research:  I have certainly heard of a number of examples where IT organizations had a number of Agile projects going on simultaneously in different parts of the company.  Kind of the larger version of the Agile principle about para-programing in some Agile techniques.  Sort of like pair adoption, where different groups because they have an established code base and customers,  they will start experimenting with Agile.  They will compare notes across these different organizations and look at this as an opportunity to experiment and pool results to determine the best practices to apply.  In that sense having maintenance as well as new product development as well as other things going on provides an opportunity for doing this sort of thing.

Q: What efforts have been made in blending Agile with a more traditional approach... Is there a known hybrid ?

A:
Ryan Martens, CTO & Founder, Rally Software Development:
This hybrid approach is really the state of most larger organizations whether they be IT or large ISV organizations.  The program management level or the portfolio management level or in ISVs  it’s called the systems management level is still following the traditional “stage – gate” approach that almost hoists Waterfall on everybody.  Some organizations have gone through that and have transformed that “stage – gate” model.  However, when you have got teams that are Waterfall and teams that are Agile, it’s not in everyone’s best interest to go and kill that “stage – gate” model because it’s a little too aggressive and too overreaching.  Therefore, they have to exist in a hybrid space.  In that case, Agile Project Management systems like Rally that can show you big visible charts on a daily basis and help you steer your Agile efforts also generate Microsoft Project output and a variety of reports that help you justify your Agile existence inside of a Waterfall organization.  For many organizations that can exist in that state can do so for a couple of years.  It’s a stable state.  Stacia Broderick and Michele Sliger have written a book on that topic specifically for PMO’s making that transition and existing in a hybrid Agile/Waterfall state.  Now I don’t know if that is “state of the art”, but it certainly is “State of the Industry” at the moment for most organizations.

 Q:  How do I show my CTO the ROI from Agile?  Is there a reading list or a good place to start in terms of gaining knowledge and/or training that you might suggest for folks at the exec level?

A:
Ryan Martens, CTO & Founder, Rally Software Development:
One of my favorite books to start with at the executive level, is Mary and Tom Poppendieck’s book on Lean Software Development.  This book works equally as well for the head of the technology organization as it does for CIOs and CEOs, because it uses the lean analogy that Toyota has made so famous through its production management system.

Also, this latest RIO Impact report is a great place to start, because it is real dollars and cents based.  As far as I can tell from the conversation I am having with CTO’s and CIO’s, budgets and numbers are top of mind. 

Tom Grant, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research: 
We have a lot research done on this and without getting into some of the specifics of those studies.  I would just simply say that this could be a great opportunity to have these kinds of conversations with your CTO’s and CIO’s or whomever.  Even if you were to say to yourself “This Agile stuff seems scary and I am not going to do it”, which I hope is not the outcome of this presentation, obviously.  Still you are going to be measured regardless.  Whether or not you stick to the existing methods you are using.  So in that sense, starting the ball rolling in saying,  “Look, we really need to see how we can become more competitive, efficient, and more effective in creating products that people want. Let’s you (CTO) and I sit down and talk about how you (CTO) measure success here in this world and could we do something in a different way that would allow us to produce results.  While also allowing your (CTO) to better manage our progress through our Agile efforts.

Lauren Bocci, Rally Software:
Additionally, at www.rallydev.com you will find links to a web site and online toolkit to calculate the cost-cutting benefits of Agile practices along with information on Rally’s Agile Success Guarantee program.  This unique program eliminates the risk in adopting Agile practices.  Also, Ryan mentioned the Agile Impact Report that demonstrates real RIO data.  This can be found at.  Finally, I would like to invite you all to try Rally for free by registering at www.rallydev.com.