EOHMC Provides Insights Into the Importance of Agile in Business World

Cape Town, South Africa, July 7, 2015 (Newswire.com) - Before jumping to the importance of agile in the business world, it is very important to know what is agile.

Of so many buzzwords easily seen across the business world is the agile, which tops the list. The lateral meanings of the term include quickness, swift, responsive, lightness and the ease of movement.

But the term is searched in the Google, the most popular search engine in the world, and then the lateral meanings of the term seem quite contrary to the manifesto, and the agile principles. Now the questions that comes to the mind is that then what was the initial intent with the term agile, and why the creation of the manifesto, the principles and subsequent rise of SDLCs which stands for software development life cycles, to provide support to like scrum, xp, and kanban.  

So what is the objective of the term agile?  In simple words, it is to bridge the gap between business and IT; that is it, nothing more. So agile cannot be assumed as quick, easily changeable, nimble, or a silver bullet, but it is a philosophy that is necessary to be implemented companywide as to add more value to both IT and business.

The Scrum SDLC, and subsequent Scrum certifications, brought Agile to the fore, marketing it and making it mainstream. Notwithstanding, the hassles in implementation and in the way of business analysts moving towards  product 9owners, and project managers to Scrum master brought an initial gap in the intent of the philosophy. Eventually, this resulted in the divide between It and business conglomerations.

This is how what started as an agile SDLC became an IT implementation, making the use of words including product backlog, prints, time boxing, etc to complete an old SDLC that is literally known as interactive development. This is what is seen as the rise  of project managers. However, as the project mangers took over the ownership of the Scrum process,  the division IT and business became even bigger.

Agile is considered to be a pat of IT, whereas, it is, in fact, a cohesive, holistic company thing. Business blames IT for being sluggish, expensive and not being able to deliver what they want. On the contrary, IT blames business for not knowing what exactly they require and what goals they have. With this effective implementation of agile becomes viable.

With the things above considered, it seems quite evident that agile should be a philosophy to bring together both IT and business. It is not a new SDLC for IT to play with, and business should not assume it like this. Instead, it is a philosophy with principles that need to be implemented throughout the business.

But how to implement Agile in the existing business? Well, there is a need to look at where the divide between IT and business starts, and it can be found out by looking one or more of the following values such as feedback, simplicity, courage or respect.

Now let's model the values under threat, by understanding the principles that underpin these values. And for each principle, a defined process is required to enforce it. Values causing the breakdown between IT and business can be resolved only if the processes are well governed. It is quite important to remember that Agile is a philosophy to resolve the IT and business divide; therefore, understanding the divide, the value in jeopardy, documenting the principles, and enforcing the processes become viable. Only then Agile, in fact, will work to bring positive outcomes.

About the Company: EOH MC Solutions, formerly Airborne Consulting, was founded in 2004 and is a wholly owned subsidiary of EOH Mthombo (Pty) Ltd a company in the JSE listed EOH Group. To know more about the company and its services and solutions,