Archive - July 2012

JUL

The certainty of contracts

19 JUL 2012 | Posted in contracts | Author Rob Smith

Yesterday I had a discussion regarding Agile contracts with an analyst from a leading business and technology research organisation. The discussion quickly turned to the well-worn topic of how to provide the types of “guarantees” and “confidence” offered by a fixed price contract in an Agile world.

JUL

Microsoft Office 2013 and Tablets

18 JUL 2012 | Posted in IT, Microsoft | Author Alex McLachlan

More information is becoming available about what will be in Office 2013 (aka Office 15). It's becoming clear that, although there are incremental improvements for PC users, this is all about the tablet market and the cloud.

JUL

Are bugs stories?

17 JUL 2012 | Posted in prioritisation, story | Author John Wright |

1 Comment

To answer that you need to define a bug. A bug is something that doesn't provide the desired capability within the system provided.

Now we could get hung up on the difference between a bug and a change, but that distinction is only important for managing the commercial contract. However, that's a subject for another blog post!

JUL

Alternative Realities

16 JUL 2012 | Posted in advantages of Agile | Author Rob Smith

I read the recent Voke report, Agile Realities, with interest, and with increasing levels of frustration. It makes a number of valid points but these are lost due to the fundamental flaw in the report, which is neatly set out in the assumptions. The premise of the report is that Agile, when implemented according to the approach set out by Agile evangelists (my words not theirs) is developer-centric and prone to failure. Now there’s a big surprise.

Preview of the Agile Business Conference 2012 from Rob Smith

Posted in Agile Business Conference 2012

Preview from Rob Smith, IndigoBlue MD, of the Agile Business Conference 2012.

Interview with Rob Smith by Agile Business Conference's Mary Henson [2:32]:

JUL

Why do agile projects fail?

12 JUL 2012 | Posted in agile development, project failure | Author Stan Wade |

2 Comments

I was in a meeting a few days ago and a customer of mine who is a deep believer in agile development mentioned an article he had on the top 10 reasons agile projects fail. I had probably already read it, but it still sounded interesting so I had a quick search and of course found a number of top ten lists published, so….I read them all.

There was quite a bit of commonality and in general the following issues were highlighted:

JUL

Agile Adoption in Government - Mixed News

12 JUL 2012 | Posted in Agile in Government, IfG | Author John Wright

The Government has made some progress in adopting Agile, but there is a long way to go. So says an update from the Institute for Government (IfG) on their report - System Error - from a year ago.

The IfG update report - System upgrade? The first year of the Government's ICT strategy - says that whilst the strategy commits the Government to use a more Agile approach, achieving its target of 50% of projects using Agile techniques by April 2013 will be extremely difficult. "Until agile approaches become the norm, we are likely to see further examples of major government IT projects that experience vast cost overruns and produce solutions that are out of date by the time they are delivered."

JUL

Agile Planning - A Metaphor

10 JUL 2012 | Posted in agile planning | Author Rob Smith |

4 Comments

Since first becoming an advocate of Agile in the late 90’s I’ve always been on the lookout for good metaphors for the approach to planning, and although somewhat trivial, I stumbled upon a decent one whilst on holiday last week.

JUL

Governance Needs for Business Agility

10 JUL 2012 | Posted in agile governance, agility | Author Alex McLachlan

The right governance processes are essential for business agility. Organisations wanting business agility without taking on board and implementing appropriate governance methods are likely to fail to achieve the benefits that business agility can bring.

In this post I'll conclude the mini-series on business agility by addressing the governance needs of business agility, both at the executive level and at the programme management office (PMO) level.

Agile Business Change and Business Agility

10 JUL 2012 | Posted in advantages of Agile, agile business change, agile governance, agility, business strategy, delivery capability, enterprise architecture, IT, IT strategy, social CRM, strategic change, usability | Author Alex McLachlan |

1 Comment

Today's highly competitive and rapidly changing markets that see the rise and fall of the likes of Nokia and MySpace places business imperatives on companies. In particular, companies need to be innovative, introducing new products, updating others to react to changes in the market (or predicting or even creating these market changes).

Much has been written on innovation, from the incremental improvements of Toyota and others through the use of Lean methods, to the disruptive innovation exemplified by Steve Jobs and Apple. What is often neglected, however, is that to deliver innovation, it is essential to have an underlying capability of business agility.