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In large organizations, it’s simply not practical to just "flip a switch" and have your IT department start doing agile all at once. In these situations, agile pilot teams and non-agile teams/departments find themselves having to figure out how to work together during the transition.
Jim Johnson, founder and chairman of the Standish Group, took time out from his vacation to talk with InfoQ editor Deborah Hartmann about his research, and the role of Agile in changing the IT industry. Johnson is best known for creating the CHAOS Chronicles: 12 years of independent research on project performance, including data on over 50,000 completed IT projects.
In a recent newsletter, Scott Ambler looked at why fixed price projects tend to overrun and often fail to solve the business problems they set out to conquer. Scott named the key problems in fixed price projects, identified the bad habits they encourage for customers and developers, and ended with a call to revisit how we fund our IT projects, offering an alternative.
InfoQ editor Deborah Hartmann interviewed the creator of the CHAOS Chronicles, Standish Group founder and chairman Jim Johnson. The Standish Group's statistics on project failure are widely quoted, as they have been since the first survey results came out in 1994. Jim spoke with Deborah about his research, and the role of Agile in changing the IT industry.
In his column in August's Communications of the ACM, Robert L. Glass asked: "The Standish report: does it really describe a software crisis?" Glass sets out to reconsider the relevancy of a frequently cited report on software project failures, but in absence of hard data, Glass and others can't get beyond asking questions.
Tom Looy, Thoughtworks PM, reflects on an absurdity at the root of traditional planning. He has blogged about estimating and his preference for measurement instead, while reminding us that most projects are not set up for adequately measuring progress.
