Q5 - Israel Gat

q5) Has the conversion stuck and what are you doing to keep it sticky?

 

The conversion has more than stuck. In terms of scope of the practice, it flourished to the level of close to 1,000 Scrum users/seats at BMC nowadays. In terms of quantifiable accomplishments, the joint SQMA/Cutter Consortium/ BMC study has concluded:

"Nearly three times faster time to market than industry average; 20-50% improvement in individual team productivity; and, one quarter the expected number of defects based on team sizes and schedules...”

Furthermore:

“In their 20 years of benchmarking software development projects, the QSM Associates team has not seen such a high performing team [BMC’s] distributed across such a broad geography."

Suffice it to say I believe transforming BMC to achieve this level of excellence in Agile/Scum is probably the greatest accomplishment of my whole career.

To reach even higher levels of effectiveness and efficiency in software development, I believe we need to focus on four elements: methodical change, system development,operational innovation and organizational adaptation.

The initiatives in these four areas I am promoting/pushing these days are as follows:

1. Methodical change: We are more and more moving these towards Lean Agile.
2. System development: Agile, to me, is not “just” a R&D “thing”. Rather, one reaps much greater benefits by end-to-end Agile, instilling it all the way from the R&D lab to the customer shop. For example, Innovation Game® from Enthiosys is a tool I am considering using to refine our Agile/Scrum system and process.
3. Operational Innovation: My recent work on Agile-Based-Market-Of-One (ABMOO) is a good example (even if I have to say so…) of innovative exploitation of the methodology. The power of ABMOO is in transforming the business design to fully capitalize on the methodical capabilities.
4. Organizational adaptation: With so much programming work carried out through outsourcing, the boundary between where the corporation ends and the outsourcer begins becomes very fuzzy. My contention is that the next big frontier for Agile is in developing joint Agile infrastructure which will be used by both the corporation and its strategic outsourcers.

It is a little premature to assess which of the initiatives listed above will really take off big time. Until we know the answer, I am so very happy to be part of the Agile drama. This is not a drama we passively watch in the theatre. Rather, you, me, the developer in the cubicle adjacent to yours, the tester next to him, etc. are active players in this drama. What else could one ask for?!