Be an Amazing CIO with Agile Methodology

Volume II

Continuing our discussion where we left from Agile Methodology Volume I, we further state that business operations and technology are so firmly intertwined that there is no consequential distinction left between the two; we can’t carry out with business without technology. That might seem noticeable to many however analysts who have been around for a while may still remember the days when IT was just a back office operation.

Once people acknowledge this reality then I point out that, over the last 10 years, Agile practices have been systematically field tested and have an impressive track record for delivering success. There are software gear now, like Rally and others, that address Agile project management and reporting, business and IT collaboration, software testing, and the uninterrupted integration of new software with active systems infrastructure. So implementing Agile is not just a jump of faith anymore.

Agile is actually an enhanced way to handle risk versus using traditional waterfall methods. With Agile exercises, big projects are segregated into lots of much smaller projects that build on each other. This allows people to utilize short feedback loops, learn quickly and modify plans in light of new information. Two of the major reasons for failure in business and in new development projects are that companies have no inexpensive method to explore new opportunities, and they blindly pursue predefined project plans without change — even as the world itself remains changing.

The IT occupation is at a turning point: one group of IT practitioners has gain knowledge that agility is the best approach to set out, but more conventional consultants still call it radical. Yet, the traditionalists persist to apply the same older habits of executing tasks that result in the same old unspeakably expensive, multi-year projects that produce systems hardly better than what was there before, if they even function at all. More and more businesses are arriving to the conclusion that the effective support of business agility is the main motive for their firm to have an internal IT group. if not, there are preferences now to just outsource IT operations to cloud computing vendors and obtain novel applications from SaaS providers and social media.

The CIO must be trained and drive the business, position the strategic direction for IT and demonstrates that he or she can get teams completing the strategy agreed.

To make the hybrid IT model work, CIO’s require an effectual governance and portfolio management framework for guiding business stakeholders through the allotment of resources between conventional core IT and new digital innovation In addition to enhancing agility through effective governance and proactive portfolio optimizations, CIO’s need to champion and hold up the deployment of faster and more flexible work processes based on optimized communications and shorter delivery cycles.

With the agile methodology and their new CIO mandate enhances the success rate of the projects in several ways:

1. The business team is additional motivated and occupied as they are able to view how the projects are progressing on an expected basis.

2. The business gets to be more accountable for the decisions that shape the project direction because they review and constantly test the application.

3. The business and IT avoid the expensive, wasteful exercise of construction of complex requirements documents because they now entirely realize that they can never document every feature in a specification.

4. From very start on in the project, IT can review if the project is really what the firm needs and identify any mismatches rapidly to decrease the amount of time, dollars and resources that might be wasted.

5. Even for big projects, Agile methodology is utilized and compels the team to split the project into phases. This exercise divides the complex assignments into smaller, manageable projects with incremental releases and decreased risk.

So, both for this CIO and many others, we are finding that an agile approach to application development really helps increase project success rate and reduce risks. Even in enterprises where complex application are required or have lots of departments or processes — Agile really works!