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"But does Agile scale?" Emerging stories and case studies indicate that it certainly does. InfoQ brings you two excerpts from Dean Leffingwell's book "Scaling Software Agility: Best Practices for Large Enterprises". Chapter 1 presents how Agile methods respond to the need for competitive advantage, and Chapter 2 revisits "Why the Waterfall Model Doesn’t Work".
Most Scrum adopters have their first doubt in terms of its scalability. Tobias Mayer suggests that before looking into quick solutions for complex problems, adopters should focus on understanding the principles of Scrum. Once the foundation is correctly laid, Scrum will take care of scaling itself.
Greg Smith offers an in-depth practical perspective on making your agile transition just as much about culture change as it is about process change.
How can Agile teams report on progress when dates are always achieved, but scope is always soft? A common PMI metric, Earned Value Management, measures project actuals vs an initial baseline plan (cost, schedule and scope), but this set of metrics don't makes sense for Agile teams, which practice adaptive planning. Tamara Sulaiman's InfoQ article shows how AgileEVM adapts EVM to work with Scrum.
What is an iteration in the Agile world? How is it different than previous ways the software community has performed iterations? Are there different types of iterations, and does it matter? The ScrumDevelopment list has been recently discussing type A, B, and C sprints (sprint = iteration in Scrum terminology) as defined by Jeff Sutherland and the ideas are relevant the the wider Agile community.
Carrying on from last year's survey, Scott Ambler published the 2007 Agile Adoption survey this month. InfoQ provides some analysis of his findings and asks readers how they would approach getting a single view of Agile trends from across the community.
Using Agile methods with large teams is a reality - the old Agile = Small Team equation is no longer valid. Nonetheless, team size is still an issue. How important is team size and what, if anything, should we do about it?
In Harvard Business Online this week, Donald L Sull and Charles Spinosa wrote about the practice Promise Based Management - using promised commitments in the organisation to enable organisational agiity, encourage entrepreneurship and stimulate collaboration.
On CIO.com, Thomas Wailgum wrote about why, despite the evidence, Agile adoption remains at a steady, rather than explosive growth. He posde questions to CIO's of a number of Fortune 500 organisations in his article "How Agile Development Can Lead to Better Results and Technology-Business Alignment."
