Design of a Framework to Implement Agility at Organizational Level

Design of a Framework to Implement Agility at Organizational Level

Jagadeesh Balakrishnan
Copyright: © 2016 |Pages: 14
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-9858-1.ch007
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Abstract

While many existing Agile product development methodologies like SCRUM, Extreme Programming (XP), Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), Feature Driven Development (FDD) etc. cover aspects related to developing & delivering a product solution, they are not meant to provide an end to end framework for an organization to transition / embrace and adopt agile way of software development. For an organization's agile journey to be successful we should consider several organizational elements like how to do a business case for agile, how to build agile leadership qualities for staff at all levels (especially Managers), how to setup & govern an agile organization, how to assess an agile organization etc.
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2. Waterfall Vs. Agile Delivery

Before looking at a framework design for Agile, let us try to organize some of the basic differences between waterfall and agile delivery from a people, process and customer perspective. This comparison is in no way intended to highlight that agile is better than a waterfall approach. The focus rather is on trying to appreciate the fundamental differences between the two approaches. There might be many situations where both approaches have an intersection point (e.g. Plans versus Goals. Both waterfall and agile approaches have plans and goals but waterfall prefers having a detailed plan approach while agile favors a more goal driven execution approach) (Chan & Thong, 2009) (see Tables 1, 2, and 3).

Table 1.
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Waterfall FocusAgile Focus
Hierarchy – Focus on command and control approachSynergy – Focus on cooperation of various people involved in the project
Seniority – Decisions are taken by the senior most resourceCompetence – Decisions are taken by the most competent team member for that task
Directed – Workers wait for instructions and are directed on what to do and how to do.Autonomous –Workers are encouraged to choose what they want to work on and how they want to execute work.
Managers – Focus is on managing workFacilitation – Focus is on facilitation instead of management
Appraisal – Workers are evaluated by senior authority for performance and given feedbackReflection – Team reflects collectively on improvements and takes the next step towards success together

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