The Agile Executive

This blog is for the executive interested in rolling Agile at the enterprise level. It provides executive coaching through a series of “fireside chats”. These chats are augmented by a Q&A service that forms an integral part of blog.

The executive who would find this blog of interest is not necessarily a R&D executive. Enterprise level Agile implementations could affect such diverse functions as Marketing, Sales, Customer Support, Professional Services, or Revenue Recognition. The blog explores the myriads of operational, financial and business issues that stand in the way and opportunities that arise when Agile is implemented on a large scale. It does not generally focus on details of the “How”, i.e. the nuts and bolts of Agile. Rather, it leans towards emphasizing the “Whys” and the “Whats” of Agile. It is designed to primarily cater to the needs of the broad-minded executive who wishes to better understand the opportunity to harness Agile methods towards the achievement of business goals.

The Agile software to be discussed here can be developed as an end to itself, as part of an embedded system, as part of a business process a corporation is implementing, or in support of an initiative a corporation is taking. As software becomes more and more pervasive, chances are the blog will be relevant to you as an executive almost irrespective of what industry you are in. As a matter of fact, Agile methods often lead to agile patterns and behaviors in domains that have got nothing to do with software per se.

We expect our choice of topics to be guided to a great extent by comments made by the readers on blog posts and questions raised through the blog’s Q&A service. We will, of course, regularly bring up topics that we deem important and relevant. Significant that those might be, in the final analysis what really matters is the set of Agile questions on your mind.

Israel Gat

Israel Gat is broadly recognized as the father of the Agile transformation at BMC Software – a system management company that, under his leadership, has increased to 1,000 Scrum users from none in four years. His executive career has spanned some of the world’s top technology companies, including IBM, Digital, Microsoft, and EMC. In addition to his experience with industry giants, Israel is also well versed in growing smaller companies and has held advisory and venture capital positions for companies in new, high-growth markets.

Israel is currently focusing on enterprise level Agile deployments and Agile Business Service Management (Agile BSM). His activities in this space include coaching executives on implementing Agile, consulting on R&D and IT transformation and developing business designs that take full advantage of Agile methods and Agile BSM.  Click here for a list of the coaching, consulting and business reengineering services provided by Israel. In addition, Israel is actively publishing and presenting on these topics through the Cutter Consortium, BSM Review, this blog and various conferences and speaking engagements.

Israel holds a Ph.D. degree in Computer Sciences from the Israel Institute of Technology and an MBA degree from Clark University. He can be reached at isrgat@gmail.com.

Michael Coté

Coté is an analyst with RedMonk covering, among many other things, Agile Software Development. His interest is both personal and professional: having been a software developer, he found that Agile can help address some of the nagging problems of development and at RedMonk he’s able to work with clients and the RedMonk community around Agile.

For more, see Coté’s RedMonk bio and check out his blog at PeopleOverProcess.com.