Agile

In a competitive business scenario the changes are ever common, with business users all the time in a mood to bring in changes as quickly as possible and to expect the technology solutions with flexible features to match the speed. And that brings up Agile methodology in software development, which is somewhere in between traditional engineering methodologies which are process driven with toll gates, documentation, reviews, governance structure and those approaches with no process, no documentation, left to people with their ingenuity.

While Agile methodology promises faster delivery to business meeting business users' expectations in terms of features, flexibility to bring in changes to solutions and thus improving their productivity  and experience; it calls for a situation analysis for a CIO to decide when and where to adapt this methodology.

Where the business users' requirements are difficult to understand and articulate upfront, Agile methodology becomes useful with its short delivery, inspect and adapt, show-tell-change style. At the same time it expects business users' involvement throughout the development cycle, in fact as part of the development team itself.

Also because of small team with shorter delivery cycles, it expects greater skills with team members, both in depth and breadth, including excellent interpersonal communication skills. To facilitate faster delivery, easier business process modeling and visualization; Agile methodology often depends on model driven tools and demands the development team to be skilled on these model driven tools apart from business analysis and programming skills.

While development life cycle is adaptive supporting rapid implementation; CIO and his team need to take cognizance of a light weight governance mechanism ensuring regression testing, integration testing, release management and necessary documentation to support future maintenance.