Keeping up to date with business methods and trends is a key part of working in the Information Technology Industry.
At FORLOOP we like to share our knowledge and insights, to help our clients, partners, and everyone else, better understand key topics that affect our industry. Here in Insights we will share some of our knowledge and experience on some of the subjects we feel are important for people to understand.
We invite you to come back often, as we will continue to add to this section over time.
Businesses increasingly want to respond to demands and opportunities quickly. IT is usually cautious about change, and in being prudent, is often seen as slow in responding to change.
IT needs to know what business needs for a successful outcome. But sometimes, these needs are vague in the beginning or likely to change over time. This is often considered as restricting the business. After all, IT is an enabler for business.
Agile Project Management is a solution to contradiction in business and IT needs.
The primary feature of Agile methodology is its business orientation and is achieved best using the following:
By nature, Agile methodology delivers business functions in stages, or bite size chunks, and hence promotes change on the fly. Business can control prioritization of stages on an ongoing basis, and can modify the scope of upcoming stages to ensure better alignment with business reality.
The advantage of using Agile methodology, is the ability to control costs.
This is largely because you can work on the key priorities and remove or add business functions as you go, based on their function/value strategic assessment during delivery. In addition, Agile methodology requires an embedded product owner from the business who is accountable for the functions delivered. This provides business a continuous involvement with the project and ensures total visibility and control over the business value delivered in each stage.
The underlying premise of the Agile project management paradigm is trust.
The development team needs to be committed to and kept continuously productive rather than operating in a “start & stop for approval” fashion. Agile methodology has business and IT teams working in a collaborative and consultative way rather than a “vendor-customer” way of competition and conflict. This can lead to a more efficient use of IT resources and a better engaged IT capability that truly delivers ongoing value to the business.
