Agile IT Delivery

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t0ny

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#250771 24-May-2019 16:55

Hi, while agile is normally attributed to software development, i have been wondering how it can be used for IT delivery projects. Can people share their experience?

Thanks

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#2244842 24-May-2019 17:08

For IT Projects, I prefer more of a devops model myself.. (which is still a flavour of agile)

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Any comments made are personal opinion and do not reflect directly on the position my current or past employers may have.

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#2244891 24-May-2019 17:24

I've been part of projects delivered under Waterfall, Agile, Devops, Wagile (waterfall agile)

Good projects are delivered by good project managers and lead architects.
Bad projects have PMs who are useless, have no interest in understanding what is being delivered at even a technical high level and leads who have no idea what they are doing and what the outcome is supposed to be or keep on changing their minds.

The delivery mechanism is no where near as important as competent people delivering it.

t0ny

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#2244893 24-May-2019 17:26

hio77:

For IT Projects, I prefer more of a devops model myself.. (which is still a flavour of agile)

Do you have an example. Every time i hear devops or agile, i think of how a developer gets his code to prod but what if there is no developer involved and any changes are done via configuration.

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#2244899 24-May-2019 17:38

As a Methodologist, my suggestion would be to ensure one has a mature business process in place before trying to optimise it by applying Agile techniques.

Also, can you define what you mean by “IT Delivery Project” in terms of some context, as by itself it is an ambiguous term.

Software Engineer
(the practice of real science, engineering and management)
A.I. (Automation rebranded)
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(a person who believes in equality and who does not believe in/use stereotypes. Examples such as gender, binary, nonbinary, male/female etc.)

...they/their/them...

t0ny

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#2244903 24-May-2019 17:46

Deploying Skype for business as an example

Handle9

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#2244912 24-May-2019 18:20

BarTender: I've been part of projects delivered under Waterfall, Agile, Devops, Wagile (waterfall agile)

Good projects are delivered by good project managers and lead architects.
Bad projects have PMs who are useless, have no interest in understanding what is being delivered at even a technical high level and leads who have no idea what they are doing and what the outcome is supposed to be or keep on changing their minds.

The delivery mechanism is no where near as important as competent people delivering it.

This. Methodology will never compensate for incompetence or a lack of curiosity.

freitasm

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#2244927 24-May-2019 18:45

Handle9:
BarTender: I've been part of projects delivered under Waterfall, Agile, Devops, Wagile (waterfall agile)

Good projects are delivered by good project managers and lead architects.
Bad projects have PMs who are useless, have no interest in understanding what is being delivered at even a technical high level and leads who have no idea what they are doing and what the outcome is supposed to be or keep on changing their minds.

The delivery mechanism is no where near as important as competent people delivering it.

This. Methodology will never compensate for incompetence or a lack of curiosity.

So true. Or not making your project customer-centric. Delivery for delivery's sake won't ever be successful.

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Handle9

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#2244943 24-May-2019 19:24

freitasm:
Handle9:
BarTender: I've been part of projects delivered under Waterfall, Agile, Devops, Wagile (waterfall agile)

Good projects are delivered by good project managers and lead architects.
Bad projects have PMs who are useless, have no interest in understanding what is being delivered at even a technical high level and leads who have no idea what they are doing and what the outcome is supposed to be or keep on changing their minds.

The delivery mechanism is no where near as important as competent people delivering it.

This. Methodology will never compensate for incompetence or a lack of curiosity.

So true. Or not making your project customer-centric. Delivery for delivery's sake won't ever be successful.

In my opinion this is only some somewhat true - some customers can't be saved from themselves. Especially the ones who want good, cheap and fast but don't really understand what they want or want to listen to reason.

freitasm

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#2245251 25-May-2019 11:14

Handle9:

freitasm:

So true. Or not making your project customer-centric. Delivery for delivery's sake won't ever be successful.

In my opinion this is only some somewhat true - some customers can't be saved from themselves. Especially the ones who want good, cheap and fast but don't really understand what they want or want to listen to reason.

Yes, and no. Before implementation starts you have to look at the customer - who is really using the system, not The Customer - who is paying for the system - to determine what needs to be done.

Of course if The Customer - who is paying for the system - decides that he is not paying to actually make things better for their users then all hope is lost from the start.

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#2245254 25-May-2019 11:22

Ok, I will plug Intergen here. We are currently running a very successful campaign called #cxreimagine (as in Custom Experience) (the use of a hashtag was originally intended for LinkedIn ads and when I came up with that I found out #cxreimagine was never used before so we practically own it on search results now - which is good).

Check that page, download the whitepaper. Watch the Toyota video (we made that case study, in Kapiti, with local people and actual Toyota people in there) - remember when a couple of years ago there was a discussion here on Geekzone on how Toyota was changing the way they sell cars? One of the pillars of that change was to completely reimagine the experience with dealers - actually getting away from dealers. Intergen helped by implementing the new Toyota website.

Intergen ran a few Engange workshops and attended a few CX events where people get the opportunity to build their customers' customers personas and work on that. We are also running these workshops for interested companies.

All this is to say that, if you don't look at what your customer needs (and in the case of this thread is an internal customer) things go wrong very quickly. What I see a lot of times is that PMs lose sight of this and go for the "delivery, delivery, delivery" with no consideration on what is being actually done.

Disclosure: I work for Intergen.

amanzi

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#2245341 25-May-2019 12:45

t0ny:

Hi, while agile is normally attributed to software development, i have been wondering how it can be used for IT delivery projects. Can people share their experience?

Thanks

I agree with most of what others have said above, but if you're interested in seeing how Agile can be applied to more than just software development, take a look at the SAFE framework - https://www.scaledagileframework.com/

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#2245367 25-May-2019 13:04

These are all just frameworks which need to work for your organisation, circumstances and team members - not the other way around!

We have developed our own framework which takes elements from Design Thinking, Lean and Agile. We've actually shifted away from scrum as a delivery mechanism as that works best for dedicated teams working on a product without a clear endstate where you need to move with the market and customer needs.

If you're deploying Skype for business, it's a fairly known quantity so the endgame is understood and unlikely to vary much. Deliver it in the way that the team understands best, and you'll get the best results.

Just because someone does waterfall, doesn't mean it can't handle change or be customer centric, it just front loads a lot of work.

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#2245415 25-May-2019 14:49

t0ny:
Hi, while agile is normally attributed to software development, i have been wondering how it can be used for IT delivery projects. Can people share their experience?

Thanks

It all depends on what you need to do, the organisation doing it, the appetite for spend and the competence of the people doing the work.

Orgs that use waterfall have become familiar with the model of investigating everything and having a plan, before progressing fullon. You might spend $500k and take 6 months, with the theory being to reduce surprises and have a fair clue of what needs to happen, and broadly what it will cost. You then write a business case to justify the spend - remember, it’s somebodies money be it shareholder, taxpayer, ratepayer etc - so there should be a reason for doing the project.

IT projects almost always involve a migration of something from old state to new state, with the attendant change. For example, where I work has just finished deploying laptops with win10 and o365 but connected to its own exchange servers, as well as migrating legacy applications which CANNOT be abandoned quickly or cheaply.

You can waterfall plan the change to get a sense of how much and how long, and from there move to an agile approach of breaking down the work into ever smaller faster to complete pieces.

________

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#2245509 25-May-2019 19:31

t0ny: Deploying Skype for business as an example

Since there is no development component, this I would suggest is the domain of a set of process known as IT Service Management (ITSM) of which I think the best known is the ITIL standard.

If it had a development component, one would typically use a more formal Release Management (RM) process of which the end-goal would be to hand over to ITIL.

This RM process is not to be confused with more modern version where the term RM is used to infer the ability to use DevOps and Agile which would not be appropriate in this case I think.

ITSM in terms of service delivery is at level 3 maturity level (defined) when fully implemented, so it would be unlikely that agile techniques would give any benefit as they are not really focused in the area of service provision/delivery - instead it is more product focused. One would likely get more out of using continuous improvement (Kaizen ) or focus on removing problems (Lean).

One of the benefits of ITIL is that it can have a good focus on creating a positive outcome (both short term and long term) for the customer - and by customer, I mean all of the stakeholders from those using the system at different levels, to those enabling/championing the system and those who may be paying for it.

The above is what I mean by having a good solid and mature process in place. At this stage one can consider what is called process optimisation - which may include adopting some techniques from other process where they may offer value (a lean term).

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#2245779 26-May-2019 09:38

t0ny: Deploying Skype for business as an example

A word of warning, you may want to deploy MS Teams, so you don't need to go through a SfB to Teams migration.

As others have said, the methodology you use makes much less of a difference that the quality of the people on the project.

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