MOST Analysis

Mission Statement

An agile methodology refers to practices that focus on continuous improvement, flexibility, increased productivity, and efficiency to accelerate the progress of a project or the organization as a whole. Adopting an agile methodology can help accelerate the digital transformation process by enabling significant improvements in the process and introducing innovative ways of achieving the desired results. Organizations that adopt agile practices are better at prioritizing their tasks, aligning their IT goals with their business goals, and improving measurability. All of these contribute to the success of an IT transformation program. Agile practices are also known to improve employee morale and reduce the risks in a project. Agile methodology recognizes that technology is not the only priority in IT transformation. Rather business value comes first. It is important to start the transformation process knowing why and how it will help add value to the business. The agile approach accepts and encourages change. It gives the process enough flexibility to test and switch if the business’ goals or priorities change at any point. Agile practices require continuous learning, collaborations, and improvements through small, incremental steps. It divided work into smaller, more productive sprints to ensure that every little goal achieved takes the team closer to the bigger goal. Agile practices also encourage better communication and transparency through daily updates and an efficient reporting system that makes it easy to track the progress. All these factors help in improving the quality of work and reducing the chances of failure, thus reducing the overall cost of the program.

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Objectives

01. Agile Challenges: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
02. Extreme Programming (XP): departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
03. Kanban: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
04. Scrum: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
05. Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD): departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
06. Lean Development: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
07. Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe): departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. 1 Month
08. Feature-Driven Development (FDD): departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
09. Crystal: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
10. Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM): departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month

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Strategies

01. Agile Challenges: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
02. Extreme Programming (XP): Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
03. Kanban: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
04. Scrum: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
05. Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD): Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
06. Lean Development: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
07. Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe): Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
08. Feature-Driven Development (FDD): Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
09. Crystal: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
10. Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM): Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.

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Tasks

01. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Agile Challenges.
02. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Extreme Programming (XP).
03. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Kanban.
04. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Scrum.
05. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD).
06. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Lean Development.
07. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).
08. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Feature-Driven Development (FDD).
09. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Crystal.
10. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM).

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Introduction

What is Agile?

Agile is the capacity to innovate and adapt to change. It is a strategy for navigating a complex and chaotic environment and ultimately prospering in it.

The name “Agile” was chosen by the writers of the Agile Manifesto to describe the entire concept because it embodied the adaptability and capacity for change that were crucial to their methodology.

It basically comes down to considering how you can comprehend what is happening in the environment you are in right now, recognize the uncertainty you are experiencing, and determine how to react to it as you go.

Agile software development: what is it?

Scrum, Extreme Programming, and Feature-Driven Development are just a few examples of frameworks used in agile software development (FDD).

Agile software development encompasses more than just techniques like test-driven development, stand-up meetings, pair programming, and sprints.

The phrase “agile software development” refers to a variety of frameworks and procedures built on the values and tenets outlined in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development and its supporting Twelve Principles:

It’s generally a good idea to live by these values and principles when approaching software development in a particular way and to use them to guide you in determining the best course of action for your specific situation.

Agile differs from traditional methods of software development in part because it places special emphasis on the people executing the job and their interactions with one another. Collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams using best practices for their context leads to solutions.

The Agile software development community places a lot of emphasis on self-organizing teams and cooperation.

That does not imply that managers do not exist. It implies that groups might come up with their own strategies for handling problems.

It denotes the cross-functional nature of those teams. Teams don’t necessarily need to have defined roles; rather, while assembling a team, it’s important to check that everyone has the necessary skill sets.

A position is still available for managers. Managers ensure that team members have the appropriate skill sets or acquire them. Managers create the conditions necessary for the team to succeed. Most of the time, managers take a backseat and allow their team figure out how to provide products, but they intervene when the teams make an effort but are unable to solve problems.

When most teams and companies begin using Agile development, they prioritize the methods that promote teamwork and task organization, which is fantastic. Another important set of technical practices, on the other hand, that specifically deal with designing software in a way that helps your team manage with uncertainty, are less usually used but should be. You shouldn’t disregard those technical procedures because they are crucial.

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A Short History of Agile

Here is a look at how Agile came to be, how it got the name Agile, and what happened after that. To understand where things stand today, it’s critical to consider the origins of Agile software development.

Agile is a Mindset

The values and concepts of the Agile Manifesto serve as the foundation for the agile mindset. These beliefs and principles offer direction on how to bring about change, react to it, and handle ambiguity.

You could claim that the Agile Manifesto’s opening line, “We are revealing better ways of producing software by doing it and helping others do it,” sums up the entire concept.

Try anything you believe might work when faced with uncertainty, seek feedback, and make adjustments as needed.

When doing this, keep the values and principles in mind. When choosing frameworks, strategies, and techniques to engage with your team and provide value to your clients, let your context be your guide.

What are Agile Methodologies?

What does the notion of Agile techniques mean if Agile is a mindset? You might find it useful to have a precise definition of approach before responding to this query.

A methodology, according to Alistair Cockburn, is the set of rules that a team decides to abide by. This implies that each team will have its own methodology, which will be distinct from the methodologies of other teams in either minor or significant ways.

Hence, Agile techniques are the practices that a team choose to adopt in accordance with Agile values and principles.

I thought Scrum and XP were Agile techniques, you’re presumably saying. Alistair referred to those ideas as a framework. They undoubtedly originated from the technique of a particular team, but when they were made universal to be used by other teams, they became frameworks. These frameworks assist teams in deciding where to begin with their methodologies, but they shouldn’t be the methodology itself. The team’s use of a framework will constantly need to be modified so that it is appropriate for the situation.

What about Agile Project Management or Agile Business Analysis?

Those participating in software development activities but who did not personally produce software searched for a means to understand how these Agile concepts applied to their field of work as Agile Software Development gained popularity.

Software engineers (together with a tester) wrote the Agile Manifesto and the 12 Principles to solve problems they encountered. Agile can be used in numerous contexts if you consider it to be a mentality.

When you do that, agile is now a noun. It explains how you go about doing a particular task. Because of the reasons mentioned above, it does not produce a new methodology.

Asking “How might we execute project management in a way that allows us to create and respond to change and cope with uncertainty” will help you better grasp Agile project management. Together, Agile Alliance and Project Management Institute (PMI) researched this issue to produce the Agile Practice Guide (Available to Agile Alliance Members).

Asking “How might we undertake business analysis in a way that allows us to create and respond to change and cope with uncertainty” will help you better grasp Agile business analysis. In order to develop the Agile Extension to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge, Agile Alliance and the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) jointly investigated this question (Available to Agile Alliance Members).

What is Business Agility?

The two ideas mentioned above are two instances of an effort to take Agile “outside of software.” The contemporary Business Agility movement is the product of those efforts.

Those who desire Business Agility ask themselves, “How might we build and manage our business in a way that allows us to create and respond to change and deal with uncertainty,” if you take the concept of Agile as a mindset further.

Business agility might be defined as the understanding that for individuals inside an organization to operate with an Agile attitude, the entire organization must support that mindset. Before the business altered its structure and operations to function in an uncertain environment, agile software development was never truly agile.

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Key Agile Concepts

Below are a few key Agile concepts.

User Stories: The team breaks the work into functional units known as “user stories,” in conjunction with the client or product owner. Each user narrative is anticipated to add something valuable to the final product.

Daily Meeting: The team meets every day at the same time to update everyone on information that is essential for coordination: each team member briefly explains any “finished” contributions and any challenges they have encountered.

Personas: The team creates in-depth, fictitious biographies of hypothetical users of the future product when the project requires it, such as when user experience is a key determinant in project outcomes.

Team: A “team” in terms of agile is a small group of individuals allocated to the same project or effort, almost all of whom work full-time. A small percentage of team members might work part-time or have additional obligations.

Incremental Development: The majority of Agile teams prefer to utilize an incremental development strategy, which in an Agile setting means that each iteration of the product improves on the one before it by including user-visible functionality.

Iterative Development: Agile projects are iterative insofar as they intentionally allow for “repeating” software development activities, and for potentially “revisiting” the same work products.

Milestone Retrospective: Once a project has been running for a while or at its conclusion, the entire permanent team (not just the developers) devotes one to three days to a thorough examination of the key moments that have occurred.

What Kinds of Agile Methodologies Are There?

As was previously mentioned, the term “agile” refers to techniques and best practices for planning projects in accordance with the ideals and guidelines outlined in the Agile Manifesto. Agile can be implemented in a variety of ways, and there are numerous approaches to select from. Some of the most popular Agile frameworks are listed here.

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Kanban

Teams can see the progress made thus far and what’s coming up next thanks to the straightforward, visual project management method known as kanban. The primary management tool for Kanban projects is a Kanban board, which divides tasks into three columns: “To Do,” “Doing,” and “Done.”

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Scrum

In many aspects, Scrum and Kanban are similar. Similar to a Kanban board, a Scrum board is how Scrum commonly organizes tasks into columns based on progress. Scrum concentrates on segmenting projects into sprints and only planning and controlling one sprint at a time, in contrast to Kanban. Scrum master and product owner are two further distinctive project responsibilities.

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Extreme Programming (XP)

In order to facilitate agile software development initiatives, Extreme Programming (XP) was created. Similar to the Scrum process, it emphasizes continuous development and customer delivery and employs intervals or sprints. Yet XP additionally includes 12 auxiliary procedures unique to the field of software development:

• Planning game
• Small releases
• Customer acceptance tests
• Simple design
• Pair programming
• Test-driven development
• Refactoring
• Continuous integration
• Collective code ownership
• Coding standards
• Metaphor
• Sustainable pace

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Feature-driven development (FDD)

Another Agile framework that is specialized to software is feature-driven development. According to this methodology, software models must be produced every two weeks, and every aspect of the models must have a development and design strategy. It is better suited for teams with extensive design and planning skills because it has more stringent documentation requirements than XP. FDD divides projects into five fundamental activities:

• Develop an overall model
• Build a feature list
• Plan by feature
• Design by feature
• Build by feature

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Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)

The demand for a standard industry framework for quick software delivery gave rise to the Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM). Rework is expected, and any changes to the development process that take place must be reversible. Scrum, XP, and FDD all use sprints, and so does DSDM. This framework is built on the following eight guiding ideas:

• Focus on the business need
• Deliver on time
• Collaborate
• Never compromise quality
• Build incrementally from firm foundations
• Develop iteratively
• Communicate continuously and clearly
• Demonstrate control

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Crystal

Agile techniques belonging to the Crystal family include Crystal Clear, Crystal Yellow, Crystal Orange, Crystal Red, etc. Each has a distinct structure. Your decision is influenced by a number of project parameters, including the size of your team, your priorities, and the importance of the project.

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Lean Development

Lean development is often grouped with Agile, but it’s an entirely different methodology that happens to share many of the same values. The main principles of the Lean methodology include:

• Eliminating waste
• Build quality in
• Create knowledge
• Defer commitment
• Deliver fast
• Respect people
• Optimize the whole

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The Five Principles of Agile IT Transformation

Agile IT transformation is supported by research showing that effective IT transformations result from continuous innovation, which involves dramatically altering business models and capabilities over time, in small steps, and when resources permit. This enables businesses to quickly respond to shifting market conditions and customer demands by launching, learning from, and relaunching digital projects.

Agile IT transformation initiatives embrace five core principles:

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Principle 1: start with a transformative vision

63% of company leaders said they don’t properly understand the potential of next-generation technology, according to a recent Gartner survey. Unsurprisingly, only 13% of respondents claimed they have chosen the next significant investment in digital business technology. It is clear why this is the case. The firm needs a transformation vision that would outline its digital strategy and, more significantly, enable it to track its progress and make changes in real time to improve results. The compelling future digital vision must be created, expressed, and communicated by senior management.

Transformation does not occur bottom-up.

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Principle 2: focus on building digital customer engagement

Marketers started using digital channels to distribute goods and services in the late 20th century. Product portfolios are evolving into apps today. Legacy business models are put under pressure by customer expectations influenced by digital innovations because consumers rarely accept an experience as satisfactory. As a result, business models must change in order to provide exciting and personalized customer experiences and to maintain engagement. The music industry changed when it adopted a business strategy that overcame the constraints of the physical world in response to what consumers actually wanted—constant access to their favorite music combined with opinions from friends, critics, and the musicians themselves.

Building client connection is the key to effective IT transitions that increase engagement. Different methods are used for digital customer engagement than for conventional digital or marketing projects. They have the following three qualities:

1. Unlike earlier marketing endeavors that were more back-office marketing automation and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) centered, digital technology is developed around the front-end customer experience.

2. Technology and methods cannot be bought as a whole set off the shelf. A digital ecosystem that automates the customer experience through social, data, cloud, and mobile is instead enabled by sets of applications and developing platform technologies.

3. Exposure to new growth opportunities—not by incorporating digital features into already-existing products, but by shifting focus and taking the needs of the digital consumer into account for products and services.

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Principle 3: support the vision with secure digital platforms

We seldom ever think about the underlying infrastructure that supports our digital experience when using our mobile devices and tablets. Enterprise Resource Planning systems have shaped and controlled the application landscape in the corporate setting for more than 20 years, leading to monolithic structures, high costs, and constrained flexibility. The Cloud has started to open up the application landscape over the last few years, taking control away from the few oligopolistic traditional development suppliers. Applications today come from numerous novel sources, such as internet marketplaces and catalogs. The world can now appear to be included in an organization’s IT department.

Platforms are the major innovation channel in this context. The necessity for the large research and development teams of the past is decreasing as some of the best innovation in the industry is taking place outside of the company’s doors. With the help of these robust digital platforms’ open Application Program Interfaces (APIs), open datasets, service catalogs, integration frameworks, solution guidance, and collaboration tools, a company can easily establish its own market based on customer-focused solutions that make use of enterprise-grade data and services. Digital platforms enable the intelligent use of Cloud, Big Data, social media, smart “Things,” and mobile devices with an unlimited number of technology partners. To connect the steady and predictable world of business systems with the dynamic, opportunistic environment of digital transformation, leading organizations are gradually deploying digital platforms. On the basis of market or customer change, digital platforms enable business owners, partners, and even customers to quickly construct next-generation products.

While digital platforms and next-gen solutions have made a variety of innovative, affordable, dynamic solutions possible, they have also opened the door to new next-gen risks. Extreme connectivity and open architecture are characteristics of the digital world. Maintaining security and risk management systems has proven difficult for IT departments as a result. The conflict arises from the back-end IT compliance’s innate slowness compared to the quickness and agility of digital platforms. The digital innovation killer, however, is hiding behind an impenetrable firewall, therefore these new threats must be controlled.

Risks relevant to an organization’s particular activity must be given priority. Security is currently the most popular application, thus risk management requires clever technologies that can swiftly identify intrusions and react in real time. The secret to freeing up existing IT assets and fostering digital innovation and growth is secure access to digital platform components. While protecting assets and data is of the utmost importance, the correct strategy will enable the speed, security, and expansion needed in the modern digital economy.

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Principle 4: drive insight with data-driven visualization

Modern digital businesses continually collect data as well as connect and visualize that data in a way that produces actionable insights. Understanding and addressing consumer personas and micro segments is the key to releasing real-time data insight for dynamic and unified customer engagement.

Companies often have a solid base of sales transactional data. Yet, the dimensionality that is required to generate insightful demographic, attitudinal, and predictive insights is frequently missing from this data. In addition, using both purchased and publically available data to enhance data is uncommon.

Via statistical graphics, plots, infographics, and dynamic tables and charts, many businesses employ data visualization to effectively and efficiently convey information to people. Users that employ effective visualization can analyze and reason about data and evidence. Data visualization improves accessibility, comprehension, and usability of complicated data. It expedites executive and stakeholder decision-making and comprehension of technologies and capabilities, which lowers rework and, eventually, application development costs.

Source: cohnreznick.com

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Principle 5: embrace digital agility to create advantage

Because of the constantly shifting market and client conditions, business leaders frequently struggle to carry out large-scale projects. The traditional business model includes projects with 6–18 month lifecycles and fragmented, non-integrated platforms by business function. By the time a project is finished, the market and the needs of the customers have frequently changed, and the success criteria and ROI are rarely met.

By creating a “digital agility advantage” that enables a firm to adopt market and operational changes as a matter of routine through the use of digital technology, businesses can embrace adaptable differentiation and avoid these problems. Initiatives for digital agility are based on 30-day sprints, with new iterations being developed more quickly and effectively. Using the concept of “learn, launch, re-learn, re-launch,” a company is able to experiment and change continuously, improving the strategy in manageable iterations. Businesses that thrive in the digital age must show that they understand how to be adaptable. In addition, they must be able to manage innovation and governance in an agile manner during execution.

In order to enable a corporation to continuously adapt its digital strategy in response to past performance and program feedback, digital agility enables digital innovation. Best practice businesses often evaluate their level of digital maturity across all capabilities as they look into new ways to spur dramatic growth for their enterprise. Successful transformation management requires a digital innovation framework.

With the large number of internal and external partners, platforms, frameworks, and designs that are used, digital governance offers a difficulty. The work might be implemented globally, which would make geographic management and risk reduction more difficult. Centralized coordination of digital programs is the most typical. Compared to silo, hub, and global organizational methods, this governance structure works better. Radical organizational change is possible when combined with a monitoring program using scorecards and key performance indicators.

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Why Agile Drives IT Transformation

Here are the reasons why an agile approach to digitization is effective:

1. Constant communication and collaboration

Employees are expected to follow directions and complete their work quickly in top-down projects with deadlines. As the reputation (and careers) of executives are on the line if the project fails, these environments are prone to becoming fear-driven. Conflict and change communication are discouraged, which frequently leads to subpar projects.

Agile, on the other hand, encourages participation and feedback from the entire team, including IT, non-IT, executives, and occasionally clients, leading to projects that are successful and popular with end users.

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2. Trust and accountability between employees and team members

When a business is top-down, decision-makers’ reputations are tied to project performance, and executives dread failure if projects don’t deliver. When executives manipulate performance reports to portray apparent achievement, they could inflate those reports. In contrast, Agile fosters a culture of transparency where each stakeholder feels accountable for the project’s success through whole-team cooperation.

As Gartner reports, businesses move twice as fast on their digital transformation journey once staff and management appreciate the importance of their project.

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3. Flexibility

The traditional structure, which employs a waterfall approach, spends costs before adamantly demanding successful outcomes. As there is an imposed deadline and employees are graded on how well they complete top-down standards, disagreement is discouraged. It might be too late to turn around once decision-makers have started on their preplanned excursions without spending more money and time.

Agile, on the other hand, manages risks by segmenting its process into time-boxed sprints, one for each target, and only moving forward after receiving unanimous approval from its team.

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4. Continuous improvement

The process of digital transformation is ongoing. Developers are aware that they must regularly review and update their IT systems as laws change or new infrastructure enters the market. This habit of continual process improvement is essential for maintaining systems compliance with changing government rules, including those pertaining to consumer privacy, and for reducing the length of IT defenses against cyber intrusion.

Top-tier industries, such those in the FinTech, Health, Government, or Legal sectors, where even one failure may send them to their knees, require the ability to continuously improve. Until you break down continuous development into smaller, more manageable chunks, it can appear daunting.

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5. Customer-centric

Your chances of pleasing your customer increase when you are focused on their needs. A cursory comparison of the Fortune 500 list from more than 60 years ago reveals that owing to market upheaval, nearly 90% of those who were monarchs of their industries vanished. Only companies like Boeing, Campbell Soup, Colgate-Palmolive, General Motors, IBM, Kellogg, and Procter and Gamble who used customer-led innovation succeeded.

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Executive Summary

Chapter 1: Agile Challenges

Difficulties are what make life fascinating; overcoming them is what makes life worthwhile, according to a quotation. The same principle holds true for problems with Agile transition.

47% of Agile transitions, according to a research, fail. According to the survey, 67% of these Agile disasters have fatal outcomes. You might feel overpowered by these figures. Certainly, these are significant numbers considering that the majority of modern enterprises rely on Agile for their changes. It is only natural to wonder why it is so difficult to duplicate something that is successful on a team. Why doesn’t the same thing apply to enterprise-level transformation?

It’s critical to understand the obstacles to Agile transformation that each organization may experience. Understanding how to get through obstacles is just as crucial. Let’s discuss the difficulties and possible solutions:

1. Third-Party Influences:

The majority of Agile transformation failures are caused by external forces. These days, many businesses are bound by either fixed-outcome or fixed-price contracts. If not, they are compelled to engage with partners who are unwilling or unable to switch to an Agile Delivery Model. Let’s assume your company uses the Agile delivery system. Nonetheless, you are compelled to cooperate with a noncompliant supplier. Your Agile progress may be hampered in this situation.

2. Culture Shift:

One of the largest obstacles to an Agile transition is a culture shift. Certainly, some refer to Agile as a common attitude or culture rather than a set of procedures. When it comes to transforming or scaling Agile, this approach proves to be both a blessing and a curse. Of course, you believe that the framework chosen is more significant than mentality when it comes to Agile transformation. Nonetheless, developing a common attitude is challenging.

Any culture’s components fit together as a supporting system when discussing it. They stick together to thwart any attempts to alter it. Team-level single-fix adjustments may initially appear to be making progress. On the other hand, over time, the organizational culture’s interconnected elements may prevail. As a result, the adjustment made draws from the organization’s preexisting culture.

3. Getting Buy-in:

Obtaining buy-in is one of the primary obstacles when thinking about Agile transformation issues. Many businesses will begin the Agile transition process with one strategy. They implement Agile techniques in a single workspace vertical. In other words, they begin with fewer leaders and smaller teams. Of course, the methodology’s pilot experiment could be a success. Nonetheless, its impact may be severely constrained. The executive team frequently struggles to comprehend the strategic value due to the obstructionist nature. Also, they are unable to comprehend the far-reaching effects of larger Agile transformation initiatives.

4. Dependencies:

Dependencies must be taken into account when tackling the issues of Agile transformation. Your company has a few options for handling dependencies if it wants to become Agile. To handle them, you have the first choice. Alternatively, you may break them. All you will get if you completely ignore them is local optimization.

You can manage the transformation with a team that is not aligned when dependencies are present. Along with the other teams in your organization, you may transform this one. This group can succeed all by themselves. But, everything will go wrong if the team needs to synchronize any dependencies.

There will still be dependencies between the teams in a company, even if every team is Agile. Let’s assume that there is only one underperforming team in this situation. Other teams’ failures might be caused by this team.

5. Communication:

The lack of communication between teams is one of the main obstacles to the Agile transformation. Let’s say you apply Agile concepts to all of your organization’s teams. The change process may be hampered by poor team communication. As a result, problems may ensue. The good news about this difficulty is that it may be easily resolved by organizing regular contact. Not only should team communications be appropriate between teams, but also within teams.

6. Investing in Talents:

Having the necessary skills can only make things easier when it comes to the challenges of Agile transformation. The motivation behind the Agile process is skill, which accounts for this. Some businesses are only able to build empowered, cross-functional teams because they have the best personnel. Companies struggle with Agile transformation because talent strategy is only given secondary consideration.

Effective Agile transformation involves more than just adhering to a framework; it also involves a new way of thinking and acting. Let’s assume that an organization has real agility. This will enable organization personnel to develop their talents and put their competencies to use. They will then make a bigger contribution to the advancement of their workplace!

These difficulties will be covered in greater detail in this course manual, and you will learn how to deal with them should they appear at any time when you are undergoing an IT transition.

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Chapter 2: Extreme programming (XP)

XP is an approach to agile software development that emphasizes quality and provides the flexibility required to respond to changing user requirements.

Similar to Agile frameworks, XP encourages quick development cycles to increase agility. Yet it also incorporates many forms of testing and quality assurance into the development process, such as:

• Pair programming, where a second set of eyes reviews code as it’s written
• Unit testing of all code as it’s committed
• Avoiding programming any features until they are required
• Delivering only simple, clear code to streamline collaboration across developers
• Frequent communication with users to react quickly if requirements change

Scrum and Kanban are more fragmented sets of guidelines than XP is. With so many changing aspects, some businesses might want to selectively embrace the XP rules that best suit their needs rather than adopting all of them at once.

XP would be particularly beneficial to companies that:

• Want a laser-focus on the quality of their SAP code
• Have the manpower available to regularly code in pairs
• Want a holistic set of rules they can follow in their agile approach to SAP development

Advantages and disadvantages of XP

XP practices have been debated upon for decades, as its approach and methods are rather controversial in a number of aspects and can’t be applied in just any project. Here, we’ll try to define the pros and cons of XP methodology.

XP pros and cons in a nutshell

Extreme programming advantages

So, the XP framework can be beneficial and help reduce development time and costs for the following reasons:

• Continuous testing and refactoring techniques aid in the development of reliable, efficient systems with less need for troubleshooting;

• The importance of simplicity is writing lucid, concise code that is simple to understand and modify in the future if necessary;

• The use of a minimal, iterative development process means that results may be supplied quickly and that only essential features are created;

• User stories replace lengthy requirements documents, which results in less documentation;

• There is little to no practice of overtime;

• Ongoing communication keeps all team members updated on project progress and offers a high level of visibility and accountability;

• Pair programming has been shown to produce products of higher quality and with fewer problems; most study participants also stated that they enjoyed this type of collaboration more and felt more confident in their work;

• Client involvement ensures customer pleasure because it can immediately affect the development and testing process, giving them the exact outcome they desired.

Extreme programming disadvantages

However, there are a few drawbacks to XP that should be taken into account while picking which framework to choose for your subsequent project:

• It is sometimes difficult to accurately estimate scope, cost, and time since the customer lacks a clear vision of the final product;

• Frequent client meetings frequently consume a significant amount of time that could be used to write actual code;

• Lack of sufficient documentation and unclear requirements and specifications might cause project scope to expand;

• Rapidly switching from conventional software development techniques to extreme programming necessitates considerable structural and cultural changes;

• Due to the human element and character incompatibilities, pair programming takes longer and occasionally fails;

• XP’s application with dispersed teams is limited because it performs best with colocated teams and customers present in person for face-to-face meetings;

• Customers may not always be motivated, available, or knowledgeable enough to contribute to product development. When deadlines are short, it can become stressful because either no useful input is given, or a non-technical person tries to supervise tech specialists who have little to no understanding of the procedure;

• Other issues mentioned by some authors include an emphasis on the code rather than the design, a lack of quality assurance, duplicate code, and subpar outcomes from unskilled developers.

Any business can use the XP concepts in its projects, but it’s crucial to comprehend both the advantages and disadvantages.

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Chapter 3: Kanban

Although we’ll be covering Kanban in future workshops, it is important to highlight how Kanban and agile go hand in hand, as Kanban is also an important part of any agile transformation.

What is kanban?

A well-liked framework for implementing agile and DevOps software development is kanban. It necessitates complete transparency of work and real-time capacity communication. Team members can always observe the status of every piece of work thanks to the visual representation of work items on a kanban board.

Although the kanban work approach has been around for more than 50 years, agile and DevOps development teams now use it extensively. Toyota started streamlining its engineering procedures in the late 1940s using a model similar to the one used by supermarkets to fill their shelves. Supermarkets optimize the flow between the supermarket and the customer by stocking precisely the right amount of items to meet demand. The supermarket increases its inventory management efficiency by reducing the quantity of extra stock it must hold at any given time since inventory levels match consumption patterns. The supermarket can still guarantee that the specific item a customer needs is always in stock in the interim.

Toyota used the same method on its production floors with the intention of better matching their enormous inventory levels with the actual material consumption. Workers would transmit a card, or “kanban,” between teams on the manufacturing floor to convey capacity levels in real-time (as well as to suppliers). A kanban, which details the material that is required, the precise quantity of this item, and other information, is passed to the warehouse when a bin of materials utilized on the manufacturing line is emptied. A fresh bin of this material would be waiting in the warehouse when it was sent to the production floor, and the plant would then deliver its own kanban to the supplier. Also, the supplier would have a bin of this specific material ready to be shipped to the warehouse. This procedure still relies on the same “just in time” (or JIT) manufacturing method, even though signaling technology has advanced since the 1940s.

Kanban for software teams

These same JIT techniques can still be used by agile software development teams today by matching the quantity of work in progress (WIP) to the team’s capabilities. Teams benefit from more flexible planning options, quicker results, a more focused effort, and openness throughout the development process as a result.

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Chapter 4: Scrum

Although we’ll be covering scrum in future workshops, it is important to highlight how scrum and agile go hand in hand, as scrum is also an important part of any agile transformation.

What is scrum?

Scrum is an agile project management framework that uses a set of values, principles, and practices to assist teams in organizing and managing their work. Scrum enables teams to learn from experiences, self-organize while working on a problem, and reflect on their victories and losses to continuously improve, much like a rugby squad practicing for the big game (thus the name).

Although software development teams employ the scrum most frequently, its ideas and lessons may be applied to many forms of teamwork. This is only one of the many benefits of scrum. Scrum is a set of meetings, tools, and roles that help teams organize and manage their work. It is frequently thought of as an agile project management framework.

Agile vs. scrum

Due to the fact that scrum is built on continuous improvement, an essential component of agile, many people mistakenly believe that scrum and agile are interchangeable terms. Yet, scrum is a methodology for completing tasks, whereas agile is a way of thinking. The core of the agile methodology is modest, frequent releases that enable ongoing, incremental development. You can’t really “go agile” since it takes the entire team’s commitment to alter how they view providing value to clients. But, you may practice incorporating agile ideas into your daily communication and work by using a framework like scrum.

The Scrum Guide and the Agile Manifesto explain how agile differs from the concept of scrum. Four values are outlined in the Agile manifesto:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

Empiricism and lean thinking serve as the foundation for the scrum definition. According to empiricism, knowledge is gained via experience, and choices are based on what is seen. Lean thinking eliminates waste and concentrates on the necessities. Heuristic in nature, the scrum framework is built on ongoing learning and adaptation to changing circumstances. It recognizes that the team will learn from experience and that they do not have all the answers at the beginning of a project. With re-prioritization integrated into the process and brief release cycles, Scrum is designed to enable teams automatically adapt to changing conditions and user requirements so your team can continuously learn and develop.

Scrum is structured but not completely strict. Any organization’s needs can be catered to in terms of how it is carried out. There are numerous vie