Agile Software Development Catches On in the Mainstream

This Wall Street Journal article explained the continuous adoption of Agile methodologies in the mainstream and told success stories of certain companies that just recently replaced their traditional methods with Agile methods. It spoke about how Insura Humana, one of the largest health insurers in the U.S., recently transitioned to Agile so that they can be more rapid and responsive to feedback from customers and handle the increasing amount of data available in the healthcare ecosystem.

Using Agile and Devops, they can update or completely build their mobile applications in a much shorter time period. Humana has many large clients and in an array of different industries and Humana believes that if they can decrease the amount of time it takes deploy software, it will make them more competitive. The Devop methodologies of having business and IT closely collaborate with constant feedback loops in order to deploy software that is more aligned with the business requirements is just making its way into the mainstream.

Agile first started in the tech industry, but is now making its way into other industries and is already making a large impact and will continue to positively affect companies who make the transformation. Another example that the article used was Chico’s and their adoption of Agile methodologies. They switched in response to the need of being able to build mobile applications very quickly because of their industry lag in allowing customers to access information on their tables or smartphones. Chico’s CEO told the CIO journal “the magic words: faster and less expensive.” And followed up by explaining that his team was able to build software that allows the employees within their many retail stores to easily access a given customer’s history of purchases. This software also included new features such as new sorting capabilities, searching, and other useful tools for employees, which can be accessed from a tablet or smartphone.

This article is relevant to our course because it shows the true transition from traditional to more adaptive models and its' expansion into the mainstream as a more common method that is not just used by high-tech companies. We have learned much about Agile methods and this article revealed just how much more efficient and effective agile methodologies are in comparison to traditional models, and gave some first hand examples of the success companies have found with this group of methodologies. In the past, learning agile methodologies in college may have only been useful if you were planning on working at a high tech company after graduation or in the near future. This article shows that the material we are currently learning in this course is useful no matter what industry you are in and we can apply this knowledge to wherever we decide to work in. Another significant aspect of this article is that us students should be focusing more on agile methodologies instead of traditional methods because it is becoming apparent that it is the better choice.

As a future MIS professional I find this article significant because it shows the importance of agile methodology and the positive consequences that can happen if you enter the workplace with a strong knowledge of the principles within adaptive system development. Even better, if you have experience using agile methodologies in a course project or internship before you enter the workplace. I also learned that if I am capable in multiple different types of agile development I will be building knowledge on which ones work best with certain requirements while others are still debating if they should use traditional or not.

Citation: http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2015/04/29/agile-software-development-catches-on-in-the-mainstream/