Tech Musing 2: Agile Culture Shock

According to new businesses, the hard about implementing lean and agile methodology enterprise wide is understanding the nuts and bolts of the actual methodology. Nextgov reports that there are numerous cultural shifts that occur when implementing agile development. The first change is that agile development is a team sport. Your team is your lifeline in agile development. They are the members the results depend on. According to Bill Haigh, former CIO, he said that, "A good term can take a bad idea and fix it... and a bad team can take a good idea and screw it up." I agree with this statement because I can relate personally to this quote. Over the summer, I worked for a healthcare company in their technology department and our objective was to solve a healthcare mobile application problem and find a solution.  I was on a hard working team that consisted of one project manager, a systems analyst, and 3 developers.  Because I was on a good team with a lot of hard workers, we were able to fix a bad idea. In addition, I immediately had to learn how agile worked because by the end of the summer because we had to finish a mobile application that we made through agile development.

Throughout the internship we had to have scrum meetings as well as ideation sessions. In addition, we had meetings designated specifically for completing the user stories and backlogs.  The company was currently in the process of changing over from Waterfall to Agile so all employees had to adapt quickly to the implementation.  Secondly, staying on task and remaining relevant is the key to success when requirements writing. As soon as the requirements writing begins to veer off the straight line, not only do you lose the attention of employees but you also waste resources and time. The article talked how strong communication outweighs good documentation. Read says that, "Magic happens when you get the developers in the room with the customer. Because [the users] can see and interact with [the project] on an iterative basis, communication goes through the roof and allows you to track happiness instead of requirements.” Furthermore, deadlines are extremely important but not set in stone when using agile development.  Statistics show that 84% of projects do not meet their on-time deadlines. Lastly, the government contracts need to change however, it only comes in time.  Governments want companies that work in agile to move extremely quickly but the government wont work fast for the companies.

Source: 5 CULTURAL SHIFTS AGILE BRINGS TO AGENCIES