What platforms are you using?
No, we don't mean Windows or Linux. Those things are relatively unimportant — they alone can't be the undoing of a software development house. What matters are your basic competency platforms.
Agile is about (http://www.agilemanifesto.org):
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools;
- Working software over comprehensive documentation;
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation;
- Responding to change over following a plan.
Too often, an organization tries to jump into Agile all at once, perhaps through the reports brought back from a Scrum course by one of the team members or, worse, through the excitement caused by reading a good book. Agile is hard. We believe that Agile is as Agile does: we inspect and adapt, taking your organization further forward into Agile one step at a time.
We believe that the needs of a modern software development organization are almost always well-served by the Agile principles. (If they're not, we'll tell you that.) Again, we believe that to meet Agile objectives it is crucial to develop three basic competency platforms.
Before you read ahead, guess what those might be ...
Agile means humane development. People are the creative force in the organization. Software is made by people and for people. Unleashing the creative power of your people is the goal of Agile. Self-organization combines individual talents into a powerfully productive mix. Agile is all about communication, responsibility and team cohesion — where "team" is much broader than just your coders. The team can build on individual skill sets to develop the right team skill set to produce quality product with less misunderstanding, rework and burnout. | Agile means social development. Your organizational structure is what emerges out of the interactions between people. Not the organizational chart on your wall, but the actual day-to-day communities that form in your hallway, your enterprise, and your business. Here's the challenge for managers: if you want to benefit from the skills and talents of the people, your job is to allow them to self-organize, to make sure obstacles are removed, and to engage the stakeholders in the mission. Can you? Are your organization and value system set up to do that? | Agile means building the right thing In the end, it's all about delivering good business value. Although the people side is crucial, people cannot be Agile unless they have basic support for the product they are building. A high-wire acrobat cannot be Agile without a good rigging of poles and ropes, and your organization cannot be Agile without the right engineering practices such as continuous integration. These practices should be proven and lean. Choosing the right ones is an art — an art that we know. We can help you find the right set of practices for each of your teams. |
At Three Platforms we aim to give you all you need to achieve the Agile vision: to ensure that individual, product, and enterprise goals are aligned; to ensure an organizational structure that best supports Agile values; to make sure you have the professional competence and strength to be Agile. See what we can do for your Three Platforms!
We practice what we preach. See more about us at Three Platforms: our People, our Organization, and our Practices. To get right down to the nitty-gritty, see a sample of our concrete offerings.