The adoption of Agile/Scrum as a means of conducting software development has completely changed the relation between IT and the business. Of course, both sides have to be ready for the changes that entails. What are they?
- Transparency Rules for IT– Programmers have to overcome the natural tendency to pad on estimates, but these habits die hard. For those coding veterans, they have learned that the business doesn’t really explain what they want, but they want to know when you think you might be done. Of course, there is very often a big divide between what the business originally requests, and what their real needs are. In addition, that of what is originally asked for as a rough estimate becomes a quote you will be held accountable for. You allow yourself to be put in this situation once, and all future estimates will ensure that you have enough buffer to cover any situation. Anyone for 300% padding?
- Business as the Transparency Recipient – Under these new agile rules, you agree to understand that IT can only commit to that of what is currently being developed on. Secretly, you don’t like it though. You liked those days when you could throw all the responsibility onto IT’s lap. Worse of all, you are now responsible for deciding what functionality should be built, which means that you now are being held accountable.
- You Mean We Need to Work Together? A corporation needs to be very mature to hand over such freedom to their employees. The employees, on the other hand, must show some maturity of their own in understanding with freedom comes responsibility. NO place to hide…..for anyone
I suspect we will continue to have this struggle for a while due to the fact that, in spite of our best intentions, transformation really only happens gradually. That being said, big changes have already taken place, so we have plenty of reasons to be optimistic.
Author – Michael Teacher, Trainer, Blogger, Freelancer
Michael is an American citizen who has spent the vast amount of his adult life in Vienna, Austria. He is married and has two Austro-American daughters. Michael’s hobbies include swimming, painting, and attending various online courses.
