Posts Tagged ‘Hubert Smits’
“Big Agile”
On January 30, 2012 12:00 pm EST, colleague and friend Hubert Smits and I will be doing a Cutter webinar entitled “Big Agile” is More than Just a Software Method. We will follow on in February with a “Big Agile” issue of the Cutter IT Journal [CITJ] for which I am the guest editor. Coming April we are likely to discuss the topic some more in the Cutter Summit.
The heart of the webinar can be summarized in the following words:
Small is beautiful in software. While big software might not be beautiful, more often than not, it’s in the nature of what needs to be accomplished. This contrast between the beauty of small and the requirements of the big generates systemic tension in many software projects, organizations, and companies. Resolving this conflict is the focus of this webinar.
Discussing the webinar and the follow-on CITJ issue with various folks in the Agile, Lean and Kanban movement(s), I became painfully aware of the very many interpretation folks associate with the the term “Big Agile.” Hence, I would like to say a few words on what it means to me. I am taking the very pragmatic view of a client on the subject. A VP of one department or another is chartered to implement an Agile roll-out at scale. The roll-out might not include all the teams. Nor might it include all functions within the company. The roll-out, however, affects a significant number of folks. Focusing the roll-out at the team level is not sufficient.
The typical VP that I run into under such circumstances is not an expert on software methods (and usually acknowledges it). He/she, however, is smart enough and experienced enough to understand that scale matters. He/she knows or feels intuitively that Big Agile is akin to Big Data. Data is data is data, but when it is Big Data you need to address various aspects that do not manifest themselves in dealing with ordinary amounts of data. Likewise for Agile IMHO.
We plan to make the webinar very interactive. Anne Mullaney will start with a few ‘warm up’ questions to enable us to ‘dig’ into the subject, thence turn it over to questions from the audience. We plan to take the discussion to wherever the participants might want to.
I hope you will join us whether you love, hate or indifferent to the term “Big Agile.” We are expecting a lively discussion…
The Concise Executive Guide to Agile
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The IEEE Computer Society Press published today a ReadyNote[1] that I authored entitled The Concise Executive Guide to Agile. It is available through the IEEE Computer Society Store. A Kindle version will be published in June.
I had two main objectives in writing the guide:
- Provide the know-how for approaching Agile in a concise manner that requires minimal investment of time and effort by the reader. The ReadyNote does so by summarizing most Agile topics in a page or two. Detailed coverage of a topic is left for follow-on reading in the selected references that accompany each topic and in the Further Reading appendix.
- Be accessible to any executive — R&D, Marketing, Sales, Program Management, Professional Services, Customer Support, Finance, or IT. The only assumption I make is that the reader has a conceptual grasp of software and software engineering as well as an interest in learning about Agile. No deep knowledge, let alone technical knowledge, about software engineering is required for comprehending the guide.
There is no fluff in the guide. Every paragraph has been written to satisfy the “And therefore what?!” criterion. It is my intent to drive a point home and make it clear to the reader what he/she could do with the information in as few words as possible.
A simple acid test for the guide is your successful assimilation of it in entirety during a flight in the continental US. Something has not quite worked if you need to fly all the way from the US to Europe or vice versa in order to comprehend the guide…
I would like to express my sincere thanks to Michael Cote, Michael Mah, Hubert Smits and to the fourth reviewer (whose identity I don’t know) for their many helpful insights and suggestions. I am also deeply indebted to Linda Shafer and Kate Guillemette of the IEEE Computer Society who got me to write the guide and supported the writing and editing process along the way.
Enjoy reading!
Footnotes:
- “ReadyNotes are short e-books that are tightly focused on specific topics” [IEEE Computer Society Press].
The Agile Executive 