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Agile, Agile, Everywhere?

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It’s not hard to find Agile projects and development teams, especially within the Silicon Valley ecosystem, but I am starting to see Agile methods (Scrum, specifically) used for a variety of non-development initiatives.

I am an Agile convert, after having been an opponent for a long time, but I am not blind to the fact that adopting Agile techniques and tools after having used ANY other system is neither smooth, nor painless.

One of two examples that I am personally aware of are of is a research project that Forrester Research’s Tom Grant is kicking off that brings Agile techniques to the research process.

“Agile seemed like the right approach from the very beginning of this project. We plan to deliver value on an aggressive but realistic timetable. We must ensure that, however fast we’re moving, we have built-in mechanisms for making adjustments based on customer feedback. We also know that the twists and turns of research, which nearly always lead to unexpected results, make it impossible to define at the beginning of the process the exact form of the deliverable at the end. (After all, if we already knew all the answers, we wouldn’t be doing any research.)”

Early in the adoption cycle of Agile, people familiar with Agile and its principles in the software world were wondering aloud how it could be applied to non-software projects. Even more recently, there is evidence that teams are looking for ways that the benefits of Agile can be used for projects outside of software development and IT projects (even weddings).

The second personal example I have is for a company that I was interviewing with recently. I can’t divulge who they are, since I don’t have permission from them, but suffice it to say, they are starting to use Agile processes in other parts of their business specifically because of its success on the development side of the house.

I think you’d be hard-pressed to find someone in the development world who hasn’t at least heard of Agile, but what about Sales, Marketing, Finance, Business Development, or Support? Maybe as a loose concept of software development, but likely not what’s really involved. Plus, those groups are measured differently than Engineering, so Agile might feel very foreign or even contradictory to their assigned goals.

But they all have projects that need to be executed and Agile could be a solution to finding more success in their execution. Agile used to be considered a bit of a development fad, but clearly it’s here to stay…is non-development use of Agile methods a fad or just the beginning?


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