DEVOPSdigest

Why Agile? DEVOPSdigest asked the experts for their opinions on what are the most important advantages of being Agile. Part 4 covers how Agile impacts team productivity.

Start with The Top Advantages of Being Agile - Part 1

Start with The Top Advantages of Being Agile - Part 2

Start with The Top Advantages of Being Agile - Part 3

ACHIEVE INCREMENTAL SUCCESS

Agile is a good methodology and framework for tackling large-scale organizational changes, such as a DevOps transformation or a Continuous Delivery initiative. Breaking down your vision into demonstrable milestones and smaller tasks will help you realize success faster and celebrate those successes. In addition, it allows you to optimize your efforts as you iterate on the process. By realizing it is a journey of continuous improvements, with clear processes and milestones, you can avoid falling into the trap of trying to "boil the ocean" and trying to tackle too many things at once, or alternatively becoming discouraged with success not happening soon enough. You want to be agile about your transformation – build a burn-down list of things you want to change in your process and tooling, and measurable incremental improvement goals. This will ensure you can knock those down, as well as gain support as people see the incremental improvements, which create momentum for continuous improvement.
Anders Wallgren
CTO, Electric Cloud(link is external)

PRODUCTIVITY AND EFFICIENCY

The top advantage of agility for IT teams is better organization, efficiency and productivity. Continuous delivery of higher-quality code results in apps that speed time-to-value – strengthening competitiveness, enhancing business performance and improving financial results.
Gabe Lowy
Technology Analyst and Founder of TechTonics Advisors(link is external)

KEEP PROJECTS ON TRACK

Back to basics – Top advantage of being agile is still to avoid the famous "tunnel effect", meaning long-term projects that result in major failure or requirements deviation, only to be detected at the last minute. With agile, at every iteration, the project will be confronted to initial, but also new perspectives to keep project goals in line with stakeholder's expectations faced to fast moving business context.
Yann Guernion
Product Marketing Director, Workload Automation, Automic Software(link is external)

UNDERSTAND GOALS

The greatest advantage to being agile is increased visibility into work and workflows. Although feedback loops are responsible for effecting change, the visual depiction of work is what initiates these conversations about policy, workflows and areas for improvement. This transparency creates a shared understanding of the organizational goals that drive key initiatives. And when teams have a deeper insight into the overall goal, they can more effectively prioritize tasks and set metrics for success.
Eileen O'Loughlin
Content Analyst, Software Advice(link is external) (a Gartner Company)

FOCUS ON PRIORITIES

The greatest advantage of being agile for a development team is the ability to work from a well-prioritized backlog that is managed by the product owner, who continuously updates the backlog with customer, team and stakeholder feedback as well as market research and additional intelligence. Foundational to the process of taking a great idea and quickly turning it into a meaningful deliverable, the backlog focuses development on the highest priority items that must be delivered. By focusing on the most important deliverable, Agile teams can continuously create products that solve users' most pressing issues and fulfill their most immediate needs, delivering significant value to their customers.
David Rizzo
VP of Product Development, Compuware(link is external)

David Rizzo was a speaker at DevOps Enterprise Summit 2017 (DOES17) London. Don't miss the next summit: DOES17 San Francisco(link is external), November 13-15, 2017.

RECLAIM PASSIONS

The greatest advantage of Agile is that it can help teams reclaim their passions while moving the business forward. Broken processes and technical debt have distracted practitioners and product teams from the projects and experimentations that originally captured their imagination and drive. Agile can remove these roadblocks by freeing time to help teams reach their Maslovian point of self-actualization: going back to doing what they're most passionate about.
Omed Habib
Director of Product Marketing, AppDynamics(link is external)

CULTURE OF COLLABORATION

Being agile allows teams to quickly react to rapidly changing market and customer demands. DevOps teams typically keep and attract top talent because of an embraced open culture, which allows people to feel more connected to the business outcome. This emphasis on close collaboration is almost always reflected in the final product.
Andreas Grabner
Technology Strategist, Dynatrace(link is external)

The technical aspect of being agile is creating a culture of breaking down silos and embracing a more collaborative work environment which is good for retaining employees and creating high quality software.
Sven Hammar
Founder and CSO, Apica(link is external)

Go to The Top Advantages of Being Agile - Part 5, the final installment, showing how Agile improves product quality and the customer experience.