Agile Mentality

Archive for the 'Agile Mentality' Category

Posted by Dan Caruso
November 12, 2008

The Agile Mentality: a Marketing Example

Yesterday’s post challenged all bearonbusiness readers to learn about Agile Software Development. I made the point that Agile Software Development can be applied to most business activities.

In the blog OnlyOnce, a blog written by Matt Blumberg, CEO of Return Path, he wrote a post on how his company has applied the Agile Software Development methodology within their marketing group. Excerpted from Matt’s post:

As I thought about the challenges that faced our marketing efforts, they reminded me a lot of the challenges that faced our product development efforts… Multiple external and internal stakeholders with competing priorities. Poor communication. Needing to be nimble and agile in a process that has some inherent long lead-time items.

So we tried an experiment — we tried implementing Agile Marketing…We now plan marketing in six-week “releases,” each of which has 1-2 core themes… Each release has two, three-week “iterations” where we do mid-course corrections… The marketing team has a daily stand-up to review progress and identify roadblocks. And we still have enough slack in the system that we can handle a couple of last-minute opportunistic items…

So far, so good. Our marketing team has a much more solid plan of attack for its work, and we have been able to regain control of our marketing agenda, getting input and feedback from stakeholders to help shape it along the way. Cross-group communication and transparency are way up, productivity is up, noise and friction are down.

This is a great example. Over time, I will highlight others.

So Now What?

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Agile Mentality
Agile Mentality Cont’d
Marketing the Old Fashion Way
Why Zayo is enamoured with Salesforce.com
Rock Star Product Manager

Posted by Dan Caruso
November 11, 2008

Agile Mentality Cont’d

Agile Mentality : the title of yesterday and today’s post. Mentality. Agile Mentality. It is the mindset I love to see in people I work with. It is built off the well-recognized IT technique called agile software development. If I was to write a business book tomorrow, Agile Mentality might be its title. Simply put, this approach prophesied by believers of the agile development method can be applied to most aspects of modern business. Advanced Internet tools–like those I listed in last weeks’ posts–facility this.

Let’s revisit the the themes captured in yesterday’s description of the agile development methodology.

Breaking projects into small iterations, each lasting 1 – 4 weeks
Working deliverable is the primary measure of progress
Requirements are refined based on these rapid and highly visible feedback loops
Face to face, real time communications instead of written requirements

Over the past two weeks at Zayo Bandwidth, we redesigned, rebuilt and put into production several massive changes in our service activation and deactivaation process. Though those who were part of it may not of known it, but we were using the Agile Software Development methodology. Those involved know how much progress we made in a brief time–and that it is already paying huge dividends. Could we have done this without following the four principles above? No way.

So Now What?

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Agile Mentality
The Agile Mentality: a Marketing Example
Why Zayo is enamoured with Salesforce.com
Rock Star Product Manager
A-Mays-ing Progress at Zayo

Posted by Dan Caruso
November 10, 2008

If you don’t know what Agile Software Development is, I encourage you to learn it.

Bearonbusiness.com readers are generally not software developers. It doesn’t matter. The statement is not meant for software developers–they already know it. The statement is aimed toward everyone else. In the world we live in, almost everything we do is tied to the Internet. Tools of all sorts are available to quickly implement ideas and to provide rapid feedback loops. It is my belief that the fundamental underpinning of Agile Software Development can be applied to most business activities.

For today, let’s start with a description of Agile Software Development. I will paraphrase from Wiki’s definition:

Agile software development is a conceptual framework for software engineering that promotes development iterations throughout the life-cycle of the project.

There are many agile development methods; most minimize risk by developing software in short amounts of time. Software developed during one unit of time is referred to as an iteration, which may last from one to four weeks. Each iteration is an entire software project: including planning, requirements analysis, design, coding, testing, and documentation. An iteration may not add enough functionality to warrant releasing the product to market but the goal is to have an available release (without bugs) at the end of each iteration. At the end of each iteration, the team re-evaluates project priorities.

Agile methods emphasize face-to-face communication over written documents. Most agile teams are located in a single open office sometimes referred to as a bullpen. At a minimum, this includes programmers and their “customers” (customers define the product; they may be product managers, business analysts, or the clients). The office may include testers, interaction designers, technical writers, and managers.

Agile methods also emphasize working software as the primary measure of progress. Combined with the preference for face-to-face communication, agile methods produce very little written documentation relative to other methods. This has resulted in criticism of agile methods as being undisciplined.

Consider the themes captured within this methodology: feedback loops; manageable scope; face to face, real time communications; working deliverables as primary measure of progress. How can these be applied to other business processes? More to come.