Hi,
Recently the results of 4th Annual Survey conducted for VersionOne are
published. They have conducted 2 surveys. It is an interesting read.
1. State of agile development
2. Agile Salary Survey
Link to the results: http://www.versionone.com/ACNewsletter/
Regards
Archana
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Archana Joshi
CSP, CSM, Prince2
--- In agileindia@yahoogroups.com, "Ajithesh" <ajithesh_gh@...> wrote:
>
> Is there a survey/study made to find out the the extent of Agile adoption in
the SW industry?
>
> Today, what % of s/w companies follow Agile and what % do not follow?
>
> Even if a sw company follows Agile, it may only be to a very limited extent.
Hence, the other pertinent question is, what is the % of sw projects that follow
Agile and what is the % that do not follow?
>
> Do we have the above data?
>
> Rgds
> Ajithesh
>
Glad that we are converging on many points. I like agile but my one of the worry is that agile is not complete and does not address many organizational aspects. Small organizations (especially product industry) may gain a lot from agile but below I write specific to big service industry. My responses are inline:
On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 12:35 PM, Siddharta Govindaraj <siddharta@...> wrote:
Hi Hari,
Some good points. My response inline:
On 09-Feb-10 11:28 AM, Hariprakash Agrawal wrote:
> 2. Indian culture is very different than US, Europe etc and we have
> distributed development, internal politics, high competitions, status
> conscious, hierarchical society (class system), different languages,
> biases towards caste, region etc. All these goes against self
> organizing team behaviour.
Siddharta: I disagree with this. You have politics, competition, status etc
everywhere in the world. It just depends on the company culture. If you
work in a startup in India, you won't have any of that. But if the
company culture reinforces politics, then thats what you get.
Hari: World has more flat organization structure while Indian industry is still on that path. Company culture is affected by society culture, it does not come from vacuum. and my experiences is that I have seen too much of above. I am working with start-ups and I agree that they have less of such things.
> 3. In service industry, they follow what customer wants and usually
> they have less choices to make. Afterall, we are in business due to
> our customers. They all do some kind of expectation setting with
> customers but some customers want more transparency, more rigid
> processes, more documents and they are OK with slow pace. Agile is
> adopted if customer wants it. I am very much Ok with this approach. If
> customer is happy and giving repeat business why to fuss over methodology?
Agreed!
> 4. Management wants more metrics: Company has 200 projects running for
> 100 or more customers hence management needs some indicators (or
> metrics) that what is happening in the projects. Management would like
> to focus more on expanding business rather on tactical things hence
> data driven approach comes. Every PM or PO or SM need to provide some
> information (in form of metrics) to management (or project management
> tools) so that management can asnwer customer queries/escalations all
> the time. Agile might not go well with many metrics.
Siddharta: Not sure if I agree here. Agile has its own set of metrics, like RoI,
throughput, lead time and so one which can be used for managing
portfolios of projects. Quantity of metrics is not important, what
matters is whether you can take strategic decisions based on the metrics.
Hari: I did not find these metrics mentioned by you in scrum guide but I agree that agile can have its own set of metrics but it is a customization to agile. I have seen metrics, like, how risky is project, schedule variance, effort variance, function points, etc etc which management wants. Now, it is a different question that how much value they add which I can address later.
> 6. We are so many. I have seen having 15 freshers (less than 1 yr
> experience, salary between 2 to 3 Lakhs Rs annually) delivering
> software than 3 senior developers (having -10 yrs experience, salary
> 10-15 Lakhs) and we find it cost effective with freshers. Freshers are
> ready to work late night, on weekends, very flexible, with high IQ,
> high energy hence why should I worry about 3 senior developers.
> 7. High attrition: as I wrote this reason in 'scrumdevelopment'
> yahoogroup and may be, Siddhartha took parallel from there when he
> mentioned about high attrition example in his post. When you have 15
> freshers, someone will leave for even 3.5 lakhs Rs salary which other
> company will offer and self organizing team concept goes for a toss.
> 8. Freshers need more hand-holding: I am coaching 3 teams on agile
> where high number of freshers involved. Manager (or PO) is the most
> senior person and have to hand-hold team. Freshers do not get the self
> organizing team concept because less experience and the inability to
> say 'No' hinders it.
Siddharta: You have described the model pretty well. I had talked to someone else
about the attrition thing, your post reinforced it :)
My gut feeling tells me a team of 3 senior developers can do better than
15 freshers any day, although I don't have any clear data to back this
up. The quality will be better and there is much less communication,
coordination and mentoring overhead. I also disagree that freshers
cannot self organize. Go to a startup and you will see freshers driving
many initiatives. Given the opportunity, they will do it. It is just
that the culture in some companies prevents them from doing this. Of
course you also have to hire the right freshers :)
I feel companies can do better with agile, but there is just too much
cost of change to go about it. The alternative is to adopt agile in
pieces, which is what companies are trying to do.
Hari: Glad that you heard from someone else attrition and we have many like-minded thoughts. 3 senior developers vs 15 freshers is subjective and debatable. I have personally deployed some processes to have better communication, better quality with freshers although I agree that 3 senior developers would be better any day but you dont have choice many times and do not get seniors easily while freshers are everywhere. Managers need to take freshers and we need to manage a way to get best out of them.
In some cases, I found that freshers need managers more than managers need freshers. freshers cannot make decisions on their own which is a must for self organizing team and need help of some seniors (like, managers). Although, over time, may be after 7 to 10 sprints (kind of 6 months), they may start behaving as self organizing team but by the time, someone would leave organization.
-- Regards, Hariprakash Agrawal (Hari), An Agile Coach (XP, Scrum), Certified Scrum Master, Trained Six Sigma Black Belt, CMMi Consultant, ISO 9001:2000 Lead Auditor, MTech (Reliability & Quality Engg) from IIT-KGP http://opcord.com - OpCord provides trainings/consulting on many frameworks/processes and testing services for organizations
Just because the model has been working for them since ages cannot
be enough compelling reason for them to continue in similar fashion in the
world of cut-throat competition, optimization and quality oriented software
development (read low maintenance and agility).
Some of the biggest Fortune 500 organizations are moving towards
Agile completely (which offcourse requires a big paradigm shift for them) not
because they want to follow herd but they see a lot of value out of it from
business point of view.
Regards,
-ShriKant
From: agileindia@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:agileindia@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Siddharta Govindaraj Sent: 09 February 2010 02:27 To: agileindia@yahoogroups.com Subject: {Spam?} Re: {Spam?} Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
The reason agile is not widely adopted in India is not because companies are
in a dark age.
It's because they have been successful with their current methods for many
years. It has worked for them. Customers are still paying them good money and
they are making good profits. So they have been reluctant to change. Why fix
something that isn't broken?
You mentioned a 150+ waterfall project that was done by 20 people with agile.
But the 150+ waterfall project would still have been profitable to the company.
So it doesn't matter if it could have been done by 20 people. They are happy
enough doing it with 150.
This hit home for me when I had a discussion with someone who said "agile
doesn't work in high attrition companies." My first reaction was "the
problem is the attrition, not the process." Then he replied "the
current process works for us, even in high attrition environment."
The bottom line is that these companies are built on a particular model - large
team sizes, globally distributed, high attrition, high proportion of freshers -
and they have something that works in this model. The entire company is
structured around this model. Now if you ask them to adopt agile, not only have
they to change the process, but also the team structures, the recruitment
model, the HR model, the career ladder, the training method, the payscales... a
lot of things. They have to re-train tens of thousands of employees in a
completely different way of working. Then factor in the learning curve when things
go downhill for a year or two before it goes up. The company has to evaluate
whether doing all this is worth it or not, and what will be the cost of change.
The goal of a company is not better development or better delivery. Development
doesn't exist in a vacuum, it is there to enable the organization to achieve
its objectives. As long as objectives are being met, don't expect too much
change. When customers start demanding more visibility, or when profit margins
are severely squeezed, or when they start losing customers to agile
competitors, thats when you will see companies look for alternatives.
Indian companies are doing a little bit of agile here and there. In most cases,
the driver is the customer who have made agile a precondition for the project.
Agile is a good deal for the customer because they get better visibility and
influence into the software. This has forced companies to start working on
agile in these cases.
We are still
talking about decade old concept because majority of software companies are
still living in dark age
It just doesn’t work if you talk
something like post-Agile in-front of them.
I know most of biggest technology
based companies follow Agile but most of the biggest services based companies
still follow Waterfall. Most of the organizations (like banks/retailers/pharmacy
chain etc) do not focus on cutting-edge technologies that much as it’s not
their primary focus area. As I myself worked in Waterfall before moving to
Agile, I can identify the question Ajitesh raised. However, most of the times,
it’s because of the reasons I mentioned in my last email.
Projects executed in Agile score
highly in terms of focus, transparency, hyper-productivity and quality. Earlier
(with Waterfall) I used to work in 150+ team-members team for more than a year
and half to produce something. These days our biggest projects have a team size
of 20 but still we could deliver similar size of project in less than a year.
Projects executed in traditional
methodologies miss basic things like:
1.Focus and transparency. Most of the
biggest projects I worked in Waterfall, didn’t need me after 2 months but still
I had to be associated with them doing nothing. So, a lot of waste is
inevitable.
2.Continuous quality improvement as it is
difficult to remain a focus area in the world of manual testing/build.
3.Team seldom talk together to resolve
issues on daily basis. It’s a world full of chaos.
I think means and end-product are
inter-related as means impact a lot the end product. But I do agree most of the
times we are stuck just there.
At the end, I am not saying
waterfall people are stupid or anything as they still churn a lot of software
applications using it. However I must say, it’s really time to move on to
something much-much better.
Shrikant
is it safe to conclude that your email suggests that Agile is best &
obviously better than waterfall and others?
(BTW comparing Agile with Waterfall is like comparing apples to oranges).
Also can I assume you are telling that all those companies who are following
waterfall or non-agile way (what ever it means) are stupid and dumb?
Do you know what Twitter uses: Scrum, XP, Crystal, DSDM, Lean? How about Apple?
Google?
I'm surprised when I hear people say "follow Agile" or "Agile
Adoption". These phrases are almost an oxymoron. (I'm guilt of using these
phrases myself)
Why are we still stuck with a decade old concept and behave as if its latest
greatest cutting edge stuff? No doubt there are lots of great things to learn
from Agile. But seriously, it time to move on...
Instead of asking what is stopping companies from moving towards Agile, lets
ask what is stopping companies from becoming market leaders? What is stopping
them from bringing real innovative ideas to life? What is stopping them from
making our lives better? Why do most people (including ourselves) don't trust
technology?
I think we are getting caught up in the means and forgetting the end, the thing
that really matters.
Ajitesh added valuable and valid points.
I don’t want to live in the world of illusion that we have already moved
towards post-Agile era. In the whole Agile India 2010 meet I could hardly
find a few companies who are already well-versed in Agile and are ready to move
even further.
Contrary to number of successful
Agile implementations, I see more failures just because the way it has been
adopted.
Though Agile adoption has been
improving in last couple of years, the reality is – a lot of companies (75%+)
still work in Waterfall way or some other non-Agile manner.
With Ajitesh’ analysis I think
it’s important to understand why people are not able to move towards Agile so
far.
To me, it’s a complete mindset
change on management/organiza tional level before you begin implementing
Agile on project level.
It requires a good management
commitment and good Agile coach who could steer the team/organization in
adopting Agile in right way. If for management it’s yet another thing like CMM,
CMMI or similar and it has been adopted just for the heck of it (for
certification) , failure is assured ;-).
Regards,
-ShriKant
From: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com [mailto:agileindia@
yahoogroups. com] On Behalf Of Ravichandran J.V. Sent: 08 February 2010 13:05 To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com Subject: {Spam?} Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
Ajithesh,
Most
of these points you make seem to me to be inspired from surveys and data
collected from the web from similar surveys. As we discussed during the Agile
India 2010 meet, some people like Naresh and many others in this group have
matured so much with Agile that they are looking at beyond Agile.
If
Agile has not been adopted well by some companies, it may well be that there
must a small % of them compared to those who successfully did.
My
two cents is that this discussion on Agile Vs Non is a little dated and
perhaps was interesting some three years back. I think you have seen the
presentation by Scott Ambler in the below link:
--- On Mon, 2/8/10, Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@ rediffmail. com>
wrote:
From: Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@ rediffmail. com>
Subject: Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com
Date: Monday, February 8, 2010, 6:44 AM
Thanks Siddharta, Naresh and Hari.
I opened this mail chain with a deeper intention.
I agree that it is difficult to get this data of how far Agile is being
followed in the industry. As per my corporate experiences so far, I would say
the extent of usage is far too limited. This may be 10% or even lesser.
Even in many of the huge companies where we hear that the Agile is being
followed, the projects are only in some pockets (again upto 10% only).
Hence, there is a huge opportunity that exists for the widespread of Agile
adoption.
Why is the industry so slow in going for Agile? To my mind, some of the
following reasons occur:
1. Agile is still misunderstood by many. Still people have myths about Agile
and are ignorant of what truly Agile means.
2. Many people do not want to try out something new. They are just scared of
doing this.
3. Somebody who understands the subject well will be missing in most of the
companies. In short, there is a lack of Agile experts who can provide the
proper guidance and direction.
4. Even if some companies adopt Agile, they adopt it in a highly non-Agile
way and finally put the blame on Agile. They read on their own or take
training somewhere and try to implement on their own. They end up
implementing Agile so badly that they will be doing much worser than their
earlier traditional approach.
5. In my observations, the delivery managers and the enginnering communities
will be too busy in their delivery cycles. They will not have any time to
refer to the literature, understand properly and implement on their own.
Also, implementation warrants some good insights, understanding, experience
and common sense. The regular teams, however competant they may be in thier
day-to-day work, will fail miserably due to the above reasons in their
unguided Agile implementations.
This warrants the inevitable and unavoidable need for Agile coaches and
consultants. Either these persons may be employed within the companies or
hired directly. Unless the comapnies do this, they will not succeed in their
implementation and also bring a bad name to Agile.
6. Hence, it is not enough for the Agile community to just explore and evolve
the refined approach, process, tools and techniques. It is also important to
highlight that the initial training and process inception happens necessarily
with the Agile experts. Once the organisations catch up with the new culture
and become established enough, they might be able to go ahead on their own.
7. In some cases, there might be instances where some process thinkers might
still differ in their viewpoints. They might still not agree with Agile
principles in their own ways and argumentations. However, such detractors
would always be prevalent with any school of thought and there may not be
anything much done about these set of people. Despite of this, it would be
very interesting and worthwhile to study their arguments so that we might get
some valid points that might point to some lapses in Agile as well which can
be constructively worked upon to better Agile. (If you are interested, I have
one good article which is anti-Agile which I can circulate.)
8. Many a times, in bearaucratic setups and environments, the very setup and
structure itself might not be conducive for any advancements. For eg. too
much of internal politics, lobbies etc.
This list can grow as other pratctitioners add from their observations and
experiences.
Conclusions:
It would certainly be worthwhile brainstorming and studying the reasons why
Agile is not so widespread yet in the industry. This can lead to many an
insight and warrant a lot of action from the Agile community to take far
greater steps in leading the industry towards the already pioneered
betterments and revolution. Such a study and action can also make Agile more
open for its own evolution, as well as catalyse its own advancements by
drawing many more players to its
bosom.
Shrikant is it safe to conclude that your email suggests that Agile is best & obviously better than waterfall and others? (BTW comparing Agile with Waterfall is like comparing apples to oranges).
Also can I assume you are telling that all those companies who are following waterfall or non-agile way (what ever it means) are stupid and dumb?
Do you know what Twitter uses: Scrum, XP, Crystal, DSDM, Lean? How about Apple? Google?
I'm surprised when I hear people say "follow Agile" or "Agile Adoption". These phrases are almost an oxymoron. (I'm guilt of using these phrases myself)
Why are we still stuck with a decade old concept and behave as if its latest greatest cutting edge stuff? No doubt there are lots of great things to learn from Agile. But seriously, it time to move on...
Instead of asking what is stopping companies from moving
towards Agile, lets ask what is stopping companies from becoming market leaders? What is stopping them from bringing real innovative ideas to life? What is stopping them from making our lives better? Why do most people (including ourselves) don't trust technology?
I think we are getting caught up in the means and forgetting the end, the thing that really matters.
From: Shrikant Vashishtha <shrikant.vashishtha @xebia.com> To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com Sent: Mon, February 8, 2010 4:35:57 PM Subject: RE: {Spam?} Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
Ajitesh added valuable and valid points. I don’t want to live in the world of illusion that we have already moved towards post-Agile era. In the whole Agile India 2010 meet I could hardly find a few companies who are already well-versed in Agile and are ready to move even further.
Contrary to number of successful Agile implementations, I see more failures just because the way it has been adopted.
Though Agile adoption has been improving in last couple of years, the reality is – a lot of companies (75%+) still work in Waterfall way or some other non-Agile manner.
With Ajitesh’ analysis I think it’s important to understand why people are not able to move towards Agile so far.
To me, it’s a complete mindset change on management/organiza tional level before you begin implementing Agile on project level.
It requires a good management commitment and good Agile coach who could steer the team/organization in adopting Agile in right way. If for management it’s yet another thing like CMM, CMMI or similar and it has been adopted just for the heck of it (for certification) , failure is assured ;-).
Regards,
-ShriKant
From: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com [mailto:agileindia@ yahoogroups. com] On Behalf Of Ravichandran J.V. Sent: 08 February 2010 13:05 To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com Subject: {Spam?} Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
Ajithesh,
Most of these points you make seem to me to be inspired from surveys and data collected from the web from similar surveys. As we discussed during the Agile India 2010 meet, some people like Naresh and many others in this group have matured so much with Agile that they are looking at beyond Agile.
If Agile has not been adopted well by some companies, it may well be that there must a small % of them compared to those who successfully did.
My two cents is that this discussion on Agile Vs Non is a little dated and perhaps was interesting some three years back. I think you have seen the presentation by Scott Ambler in the below link:
--- On Mon, 2/8/10, Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@ rediffmail. com> wrote:
From: Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@ rediffmail. com> Subject: Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com Date: Monday, February 8, 2010, 6:44 AM
Thanks Siddharta, Naresh and Hari.
I opened this mail chain with a deeper intention.
I agree that it is difficult to get this data of how far Agile is being followed in the industry. As per my corporate experiences so far, I would say the extent of usage is far too limited. This may be 10% or even lesser.
Even in many of the huge companies where we hear that the Agile is being followed, the projects are only in some pockets (again upto 10% only).
Hence, there is a huge opportunity that exists for the widespread of Agile adoption.
Why is the industry so slow in going for Agile? To my mind, some of the following reasons occur:
1. Agile is still misunderstood by many. Still people have myths about Agile and are ignorant of what truly Agile means.
2. Many people do not want to try out something new. They are just scared of doing this.
3. Somebody who understands the subject well will be missing in
most of the companies. In short, there is a lack of Agile experts who can provide the proper guidance and direction.
4. Even if some companies adopt Agile, they adopt it in a highly non-Agile way and finally put the blame on Agile. They read on their own or take training somewhere and try to implement on their own. They end up implementing Agile so badly that they will be doing much worser than their earlier traditional approach.
5. In my observations, the delivery managers and the enginnering communities will be too busy in their delivery cycles. They will not have any time to refer to the literature, understand properly and implement on their own. Also, implementation warrants some good insights, understanding, experience and common sense. The regular teams, however competant they may be in thier day-to-day work, will fail miserably due to the above reasons in their unguided Agile implementations.
This warrants the inevitable and
unavoidable need for Agile coaches and consultants. Either these persons may be employed within the companies or hired directly. Unless the comapnies do this, they will not succeed in their implementation and also bring a bad name to Agile.
6. Hence, it is not enough for the Agile community to just explore and evolve the refined approach, process, tools and techniques. It is also important to highlight that the initial training and process inception happens necessarily with the Agile experts. Once the organisations catch up with the new culture and become established enough, they might be able to go ahead on their own.
7. In some cases, there might be instances where some process thinkers might still differ in their viewpoints. They might still not agree with Agile principles in their own ways and argumentations. However, such detractors would always be prevalent with any school of thought and there may not be anything much done about
these set of people. Despite of this, it would be very interesting and worthwhile to study their arguments so that we might get some valid points that might point to some lapses in Agile as well which can be constructively worked upon to better Agile. (If you are interested, I have one good article which is anti-Agile which I can circulate.)
8. Many a times, in bearaucratic setups and environments, the very setup and structure itself might not be conducive for any advancements. For eg. too much of internal politics, lobbies etc.
This list can grow as other pratctitioners add from their observations and experiences.
Conclusions: It would certainly be worthwhile brainstorming and studying the reasons why Agile is not so widespread yet in the industry. This can lead to many an insight and warrant a lot of action from the Agile community to take far greater steps in leading the industry towards the already pioneered betterments and
revolution. Such a study and action can also make Agile more open for its own evolution, as well as catalyse its own advancements by drawing many more players to its bosom.
Not sure of any report on your 2nd question. I am not sure if there is a company in India which follows either XP or Scrum as per book/guide because we do need customizations in Indian context.
-- Regards, Hariprakash Agrawal (Hari),
An Agile Coach (XP, Scrum), Certified Scrum Master, Trained Six Sigma Black Belt, CMMi Consultant, ISO 9001:2000 Lead Auditor, MTech (Reliability Quality Engg) from
IIT-KGP http://opcord. com - OpCord provides
trainings/consultin g on many frameworks/processe s and testing services for organizations
On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 1:34 PM, Naresh Jain wrote:
Agree with Siddharta on the selection bias.
Also what does it mean to follow Agile? If I do some practices does it make me Agile? Are we talking about practices, principles, values, culture? Going down this path just seems like a waste of time.
I would rather ask, what is the problem that you are trying to solve? -- Naresh Jain http://blogs/. agilefaqs. com http://agileIndia. org
Is there a survey/study made to find out the the extent of Agile adoption in the SW industry?
Today, what % of s/w companies follow Agile and what % do not follow?
Even if a sw company follows Agile, it may only be to a very limited extent. Hence, the other pertinent question is, what is the % of sw projects that follow Agile and what is the % that do not follow?
Shrikant is it safe to conclude that your email suggests that Agile is best & obviously better than waterfall and others? (BTW comparing Agile with Waterfall is like comparing apples to oranges).
Also can I assume you are telling that all those companies who are following waterfall or non-agile way (what ever it means) are stupid and dumb?
Do you know what Twitter uses: Scrum, XP, Crystal, DSDM, Lean? How about Apple? Google?
I'm surprised when I hear people say "follow Agile" or "Agile Adoption". These phrases are almost an oxymoron. (I'm guilt of using these phrases myself)
Why are we still stuck with a decade old concept and behave as if its latest greatest cutting edge stuff? No doubt there are lots of great things to learn from Agile. But seriously, it time to move on...
Instead of asking what is stopping companies from moving
towards Agile, lets ask what is stopping companies from becoming market leaders? What is stopping them from bringing real innovative ideas to life? What is stopping them from making our lives better? Why do most people (including ourselves) don't trust technology?
I think we are getting caught up in the means and forgetting the end, the thing that really matters.
Learn Code Smells, Refactoring, Patterns and TDD skills at http://industriallogic.com/elearning
From: Shrikant Vashishtha <shrikant.vashishtha @xebia.com> To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com Sent: Mon, February 8, 2010 4:35:57 PM Subject: RE: {Spam?} Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
Ajitesh added valuable and valid points. I don’t want to live in the world of illusion that we have already moved towards post-Agile era. In the whole Agile India 2010 meet I could hardly find a few companies who are already well-versed in Agile and are ready to move even further.
Contrary to number of successful Agile implementations, I see more failures just because the way it has been adopted.
Though Agile adoption has been improving in last couple of years, the reality is – a lot of companies (75%+) still work in Waterfall way or some other non-Agile manner.
With Ajitesh’ analysis I think it’s important to understand why people are not able to move towards Agile so far.
To me, it’s a complete mindset change on management/organiza tional level before you begin implementing Agile on project level.
It requires a good management commitment and good Agile coach who could steer the team/organization in adopting Agile in right way. If for management it’s yet another thing like CMM, CMMI or similar and it has been adopted just for the heck of it (for certification) , failure is assured ;-).
Regards,
-ShriKant
From: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com [mailto:agileindia@ yahoogroups. com] On Behalf Of Ravichandran J.V. Sent: 08 February 2010 13:05 To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com Subject: {Spam?} Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
Ajithesh,
Most of these points you make seem to me to be inspired from surveys and data collected from the web from similar surveys. As we discussed during the Agile India 2010 meet, some people like Naresh and many others in this group have matured so much with Agile that they are looking at beyond Agile.
If Agile has not been adopted well by some companies, it may well be that there must a small % of them compared to those who successfully did.
My two cents is that this discussion on Agile Vs Non is a little dated and perhaps was interesting some three years back. I think you have seen the presentation by Scott Ambler in the below link:
--- On Mon, 2/8/10, Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@ rediffmail. com> wrote:
From: Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@ rediffmail. com> Subject: Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com Date: Monday, February 8, 2010, 6:44 AM
Thanks Siddharta, Naresh and Hari.
I opened this mail chain with a deeper intention.
I agree that it is difficult to get this data of how far Agile is being followed in the industry. As per my corporate experiences so far, I would say the extent of usage is far too limited. This may be 10% or even lesser.
Even in many of the huge companies where we hear that the Agile is being followed, the projects are only in some pockets (again upto 10% only).
Hence, there is a huge opportunity that exists for the widespread of Agile adoption.
Why is the industry so slow in going for Agile? To my mind, some of the following reasons occur:
1. Agile is still misunderstood by many. Still people have myths about Agile and are ignorant of what truly Agile means.
2. Many people do not want to try out something new. They are just scared of doing this.
3. Somebody who understands the subject well will be missing in
most of the companies. In short, there is a lack of Agile experts who can provide the proper guidance and direction.
4. Even if some companies adopt Agile, they adopt it in a highly non-Agile way and finally put the blame on Agile. They read on their own or take training somewhere and try to implement on their own. They end up implementing Agile so badly that they will be doing much worser than their earlier traditional approach.
5. In my observations, the delivery managers and the enginnering communities will be too busy in their delivery cycles. They will not have any time to refer to the literature, understand properly and implement on their own. Also, implementation warrants some good insights, understanding, experience and common sense. The regular teams, however competant they may be in thier day-to-day work, will fail miserably due to the above reasons in their unguided Agile implementations.
This warrants the inevitable and
unavoidable need for Agile coaches and consultants. Either these persons may be employed within the companies or hired directly. Unless the comapnies do this, they will not succeed in their implementation and also bring a bad name to Agile.
6. Hence, it is not enough for the Agile community to just explore and evolve the refined approach, process, tools and techniques. It is also important to highlight that the initial training and process inception happens necessarily with the Agile experts. Once the organisations catch up with the new culture and become established enough, they might be able to go ahead on their own.
7. In some cases, there might be instances where some process thinkers might still differ in their viewpoints. They might still not agree with Agile principles in their own ways and argumentations. However, such detractors would always be prevalent with any school of thought and there may not be anything much done about
these set of people. Despite of this, it would be very interesting and worthwhile to study their arguments so that we might get some valid points that might point to some lapses in Agile as well which can be constructively worked upon to better Agile. (If you are interested, I have one good article which is anti-Agile which I can circulate.)
8. Many a times, in bearaucratic setups and environments, the very setup and structure itself might not be conducive for any advancements. For eg. too much of internal politics, lobbies etc.
This list can grow as other pratctitioners add from their observations and experiences.
Conclusions: It would certainly be worthwhile brainstorming and studying the reasons why Agile is not so widespread yet in the industry. This can lead to many an insight and warrant a lot of action from the Agile community to take far greater steps in leading the industry towards the already pioneered betterments and
revolution. Such a study and action can also make Agile more open for its own evolution, as well as catalyse its own advancements by drawing many more players to its bosom.
Not sure of any report on your 2nd question. I am not sure if there is a company in India which follows either XP or Scrum as per book/guide because we do need customizations in Indian context.
-- Regards, Hariprakash Agrawal (Hari),
An Agile Coach (XP, Scrum), Certified Scrum Master, Trained Six Sigma Black Belt, CMMi Consultant, ISO 9001:2000 Lead Auditor, MTech (Reliability Quality Engg) from IIT-KGP http://opcord. com - OpCord provides
trainings/consultin g on many frameworks/processe s and testing services for organizations
On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 1:34 PM, Naresh Jain wrote:
Agree with Siddharta on the selection bias.
Also what does it mean to follow Agile? If I do some practices does it make me Agile? Are we talking about practices, principles, values, culture? Going down this path just seems like a waste of time.
I would rather ask, what is the problem that you are trying to solve? -- Naresh Jain http://blogs. agilefaqs. com http://agileIndia. org
Is there a survey/study made to find out the the extent of Agile adoption in the SW industry?
Today, what % of s/w companies follow Agile and what % do not follow?
Even if a sw company follows Agile, it may only be to a very limited extent. Hence, the other pertinent question is, what is the % of sw projects that follow Agile and what is the % that do not follow?
Agility might be said to be about encountering all the problems so early and so often that the effort to fix them is less than the pain of enduring them.
- Ajay
On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 17:32, Ajay Danait <ajaydanait@...> wrote:
Intent ?
On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 17:12, venkat kl <venkat_kl@...> wrote:
Hi,
Can I get some good quotations / slogans / phrases on Agile Development.
Shrikant is it safe to conclude that your email suggests that Agile is best & obviously better than waterfall and others? (BTW comparing Agile with Waterfall is like comparing apples to oranges).
Also can I assume you are telling that all those companies who are following waterfall or non-agile way (what ever it means) are stupid and dumb?
Do you know what Twitter uses: Scrum, XP, Crystal, DSDM, Lean? How about Apple? Google?
I'm surprised when I hear people say "follow Agile" or "Agile Adoption". These phrases are almost an oxymoron. (I'm guilt of using these phrases myself)
Why are we still stuck with a decade old concept and behave as if its latest greatest cutting edge stuff? No doubt there are lots of great things to learn from Agile. But seriously, it time to move on...
Instead of asking what is stopping companies from moving
towards Agile, lets ask what is stopping companies from becoming market leaders? What is stopping them from bringing real innovative ideas to life? What is stopping them from making our lives better? Why do most people (including ourselves) don't trust technology?
I think we are getting caught up in the means and forgetting the end, the thing that really matters.
From: Shrikant Vashishtha <shrikant.vashishtha @xebia.com> To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com Sent: Mon, February 8, 2010 4:35:57 PM Subject: RE: {Spam?} Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
Ajitesh added valuable and valid points. I don’t want to live in the world of illusion that we have already moved towards post-Agile era. In the whole Agile India 2010 meet I could hardly find a few companies who are already well-versed in Agile and are ready to move even further.
Contrary to number of successful Agile implementations, I see more failures just because the way it has been adopted.
Though Agile adoption has been improving in last couple of years, the reality is – a lot of companies (75%+) still work in Waterfall way or some other non-Agile manner.
With Ajitesh’ analysis I think it’s important to understand why people are not able to move towards Agile so far.
To me, it’s a complete mindset change on management/organiza tional level before you begin implementing Agile on project level.
It requires a good management commitment and good Agile coach who could steer the team/organization in adopting Agile in right way. If for management it’s yet another thing like CMM, CMMI or similar and it has been adopted just for the heck of it (for certification) , failure is assured ;-).
Regards,
-ShriKant
From: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com [mailto:agileindia@ yahoogroups. com] On Behalf Of Ravichandran J.V. Sent: 08 February 2010 13:05 To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com Subject: {Spam?} Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
Ajithesh,
Most of these points you make seem to me to be inspired from surveys and data collected from the web from similar surveys. As we discussed during the Agile India 2010 meet, some people like Naresh and many others in this group have matured so much with Agile that they are looking at beyond Agile.
If Agile has not been adopted well by some companies, it may well be that there must a small % of them compared to those who successfully did.
My two cents is that this discussion on Agile Vs Non is a little dated and perhaps was interesting some three years back. I think you have seen the presentation by Scott Ambler in the below link:
--- On Mon, 2/8/10, Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@ rediffmail. com> wrote:
From: Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@ rediffmail. com> Subject: Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com Date: Monday, February 8, 2010, 6:44 AM
Thanks Siddharta, Naresh and Hari.
I opened this mail chain with a deeper intention.
I agree that it is difficult to get this data of how far Agile is being followed in the industry. As per my corporate experiences so far, I would say the extent of usage is far too limited. This may be 10% or even lesser.
Even in many of the huge companies where we hear that the Agile is being followed, the projects are only in some pockets (again upto 10% only).
Hence, there is a huge opportunity that exists for the widespread of Agile adoption.
Why is the industry so slow in going for Agile? To my mind, some of the following reasons occur:
1. Agile is still misunderstood by many. Still people have myths about Agile and are ignorant of what truly Agile means.
2. Many people do not want to try out something new. They are just scared of doing this.
3. Somebody who understands the subject well will be missing in
most of the companies. In short, there is a lack of Agile experts who can provide the proper guidance and direction.
4. Even if some companies adopt Agile, they adopt it in a highly non-Agile way and finally put the blame on Agile. They read on their own or take training somewhere and try to implement on their own. They end up implementing Agile so badly that they will be doing much worser than their earlier traditional approach.
5. In my observations, the delivery managers and the enginnering communities will be too busy in their delivery cycles. They will not have any time to refer to the literature, understand properly and implement on their own. Also, implementation warrants some good insights, understanding, experience and common sense. The regular teams, however competant they may be in thier day-to-day work, will fail miserably due to the above reasons in their unguided Agile implementations.
This warrants the inevitable and
unavoidable need for Agile coaches and consultants. Either these persons may be employed within the companies or hired directly. Unless the comapnies do this, they will not succeed in their implementation and also bring a bad name to Agile.
6. Hence, it is not enough for the Agile community to just explore and evolve the refined approach, process, tools and techniques. It is also important to highlight that the initial training and process inception happens necessarily with the Agile experts. Once the organisations catch up with the new culture and become established enough, they might be able to go ahead on their own.
7. In some cases, there might be instances where some process thinkers might still differ in their viewpoints. They might still not agree with Agile principles in their own ways and argumentations. However, such detractors would always be prevalent with any school of thought and there may not be anything much done about
these set of people. Despite of this, it would be very interesting and worthwhile to study their arguments so that we might get some valid points that might point to some lapses in Agile as well which can be constructively worked upon to better Agile. (If you are interested, I have one good article which is anti-Agile which I can circulate.)
8. Many a times, in bearaucratic setups and environments, the very setup and structure itself might not be conducive for any advancements. For eg. too much of internal politics, lobbies etc.
This list can grow as other pratctitioners add from their observations and experiences.
Conclusions: It would certainly be worthwhile brainstorming and studying the reasons why Agile is not so widespread yet in the industry. This can lead to many an insight and warrant a lot of action from the Agile community to take far greater steps in leading the industry towards the already pioneered betterments and
revolution. Such a study and action can also make Agile more open for its own evolution, as well as catalyse its own advancements by drawing many more players to its bosom.
Not sure of any report on your 2nd question. I am not sure if there is a company in India which follows either XP or Scrum as per book/guide because we do need customizations in Indian context.
-- Regards,
Hariprakash Agrawal (Hari),
An Agile Coach (XP, Scrum), Certified Scrum Master, Trained Six Sigma Black Belt, CMMi Consultant, ISO 9001:2000 Lead Auditor, MTech (Reliability Quality Engg) from IIT-KGP http://opcord. com - OpCord provides
trainings/consultin g on many frameworks/processe s and testing services for organizations
On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 1:34 PM, Naresh Jain wrote:
Agree with Siddharta on the selection bias.
Also what does it mean to follow Agile? If I do some practices does it make me Agile? Are we talking about practices, principles, values, culture? Going down this path just seems like a waste of time.
I would rather ask, what is the problem that you are trying to solve? -- Naresh Jain http://blogs. agilefaqs. com http://agileIndia. org
Is there a survey/study made to find out the the extent of Agile adoption in the SW industry?
Today, what % of s/w companies follow Agile and what % do not follow?
Even if a sw company follows Agile, it may only be to a very limited extent. Hence, the other pertinent question is, what is the % of sw projects that follow Agile and what is the % that do not follow?
Shrikant is it safe to conclude that your email suggests that Agile is best & obviously better than waterfall and others? (BTW comparing Agile with Waterfall is like comparing apples to oranges).
Also can I assume you are telling that all those companies who are following waterfall or non-agile way (what ever it means) are stupid and dumb?
Do you know what Twitter uses: Scrum, XP, Crystal, DSDM, Lean? How about Apple? Google?
I'm surprised when I hear people say "follow Agile" or "Agile Adoption". These phrases are almost an oxymoron. (I'm guilt of using these phrases myself)
Why are we still stuck with a decade old concept and behave as if its latest greatest cutting edge stuff? No doubt there are lots of great things to learn from Agile. But seriously, it time to move on...
Instead of asking what is stopping companies from moving
towards Agile, lets ask what is stopping companies from becoming market leaders? What is stopping them from bringing real innovative ideas to life? What is stopping them from making our lives better? Why do most people (including ourselves) don't trust technology?
I think we are getting caught up in the means and forgetting the end, the thing that really matters.
From: Shrikant Vashishtha <shrikant.vashishtha @xebia.com> To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com Sent: Mon, February 8, 2010 4:35:57 PM Subject: RE: {Spam?} Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
Ajitesh added valuable and valid points. I don’t want to live in the world of illusion that we have already moved towards post-Agile era. In the whole Agile India 2010 meet I could hardly find a few companies who are already well-versed in Agile and are ready to move even further.
Contrary to number of successful Agile implementations, I see more failures just because the way it has been adopted.
Though Agile adoption has been improving in last couple of years, the reality is – a lot of companies (75%+) still work in Waterfall way or some other non-Agile manner.
With Ajitesh’ analysis I think it’s important to understand why people are not able to move towards Agile so far.
To me, it’s a complete mindset change on management/organiza tional level before you begin implementing Agile on project level.
It requires a good management commitment and good Agile coach who could steer the team/organization in adopting Agile in right way. If for management it’s yet another thing like CMM, CMMI or similar and it has been adopted just for the heck of it (for certification) , failure is assured ;-).
Regards,
-ShriKant
From: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com [mailto:agileindia@ yahoogroups. com] On Behalf Of Ravichandran J.V. Sent: 08 February 2010 13:05 To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com Subject: {Spam?} Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
Ajithesh,
Most of these points you make seem to me to be inspired from surveys and data collected from the web from similar surveys. As we discussed during the Agile India 2010 meet, some people like Naresh and many others in this group have matured so much with Agile that they are looking at beyond Agile.
If Agile has not been adopted well by some companies, it may well be that there must a small % of them compared to those who successfully did.
My two cents is that this discussion on Agile Vs Non is a little dated and perhaps was interesting some three years back. I think you have seen the presentation by Scott Ambler in the below link:
--- On Mon, 2/8/10, Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@ rediffmail. com> wrote:
From: Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@ rediffmail. com> Subject: Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com Date: Monday, February 8, 2010, 6:44 AM
Thanks Siddharta, Naresh and Hari.
I opened this mail chain with a deeper intention.
I agree that it is difficult to get this data of how far Agile is being followed in the industry. As per my corporate experiences so far, I would say the extent of usage is far too limited. This may be 10% or even lesser.
Even in many of the huge companies where we hear that the Agile is being followed, the projects are only in some pockets (again upto 10% only).
Hence, there is a huge opportunity that exists for the widespread of Agile adoption.
Why is the industry so slow in going for Agile? To my mind, some of the following reasons occur:
1. Agile is still misunderstood by many. Still people have myths about Agile and are ignorant of what truly Agile means.
2. Many people do not want to try out something new. They are just scared of doing this.
3. Somebody who understands the subject well will be missing in
most of the companies. In short, there is a lack of Agile experts who can provide the proper guidance and direction.
4. Even if some companies adopt Agile, they adopt it in a highly non-Agile way and finally put the blame on Agile. They read on their own or take training somewhere and try to implement on their own. They end up implementing Agile so badly that they will be doing much worser than their earlier traditional approach.
5. In my observations, the delivery managers and the enginnering communities will be too busy in their delivery cycles. They will not have any time to refer to the literature, understand properly and implement on their own. Also, implementation warrants some good insights, understanding, experience and common sense. The regular teams, however competant they may be in thier day-to-day work, will fail miserably due to the above reasons in their unguided Agile implementations.
This warrants the inevitable and
unavoidable need for Agile coaches and consultants. Either these persons may be employed within the companies or hired directly. Unless the comapnies do this, they will not succeed in their implementation and also bring a bad name to Agile.
6. Hence, it is not enough for the Agile community to just explore and evolve the refined approach, process, tools and techniques. It is also important to highlight that the initial training and process inception happens necessarily with the Agile experts. Once the organisations catch up with the new culture and become established enough, they might be able to go ahead on their own.
7. In some cases, there might be instances where some process thinkers might still differ in their viewpoints. They might still not agree with Agile principles in their own ways and argumentations. However, such detractors would always be prevalent with any school of thought and there may not be anything much done about
these set of people. Despite of this, it would be very interesting and worthwhile to study their arguments so that we might get some valid points that might point to some lapses in Agile as well which can be constructively worked upon to better Agile. (If you are interested, I have one good article which is anti-Agile which I can circulate.)
8. Many a times, in bearaucratic setups and environments, the very setup and structure itself might not be conducive for any advancements. For eg. too much of internal politics, lobbies etc.
This list can grow as other pratctitioners add from their observations and experiences.
Conclusions: It would certainly be worthwhile brainstorming and studying the reasons why Agile is not so widespread yet in the industry. This can lead to many an insight and warrant a lot of action from the Agile community to take far greater steps in leading the industry towards the already pioneered betterments and
revolution. Such a study and action can also make Agile more open for its own evolution, as well as catalyse its own advancements by drawing many more players to its bosom.
Not sure of any report on your 2nd question. I am not sure if there is a company in India which follows either XP or Scrum as per book/guide because we do need customizations in Indian context.
-- Regards,
Hariprakash Agrawal (Hari),
An Agile Coach (XP, Scrum), Certified Scrum Master, Trained Six Sigma Black Belt, CMMi Consultant, ISO 9001:2000 Lead Auditor, MTech (Reliability Quality Engg) from IIT-KGP http://opcord. com - OpCord provides
trainings/consultin g on many frameworks/processe s and testing services for organizations
On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 1:34 PM, Naresh Jain wrote:
Agree with Siddharta on the selection bias.
Also what does it mean to follow Agile? If I do some practices does it make me Agile? Are we talking about practices, principles, values, culture? Going down this path just seems like a waste of time.
I would rather ask, what is the problem that you are trying to solve? -- Naresh Jain http://blogs. agilefaqs. com http://agileIndia. org
Is there a survey/study made to find out the the extent of Agile adoption in the SW industry?
Today, what % of s/w companies follow Agile and what % do not follow?
Even if a sw company follows Agile, it may only be to a very limited extent. Hence, the other pertinent question is, what is the % of sw projects that follow Agile and what is the % that do not follow?
Can I get some good quotations / slogans / phrases on Agile Development.
Thanks
Venkat.KL
From: Naresh Jain <nashjain@...> To: agileindia@yahoogroups.com Sent: Mon, February 8, 2010 8:44:08 PM Subject: Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
Shrikant is it safe to conclude that your email suggests that Agile is best & obviously better than waterfall and others? (BTW comparing Agile with Waterfall is like comparing apples to oranges).
Also can I assume you are telling that all those companies who are following waterfall or non-agile way (what ever it means) are stupid and dumb?
Do you know what Twitter uses: Scrum, XP, Crystal, DSDM, Lean? How about Apple? Google?
I'm surprised when I hear people say "follow Agile" or "Agile Adoption". These phrases are almost an oxymoron. (I'm guilt of using these phrases myself)
Why are we still stuck with a decade old concept and behave as if its latest greatest cutting edge stuff? No doubt there are lots of great things to learn from Agile. But seriously, it time to move on...
Instead of asking what is stopping companies from moving
towards Agile, lets ask what is stopping companies from becoming market leaders? What is stopping them from bringing real innovative ideas to life? What is stopping them from making our lives better? Why do most people (including ourselves) don't trust technology?
I think we are getting caught up in the means and forgetting the end, the thing that really matters.
Learn Code Smells, Refactoring, Patterns and TDD skills at http://industriallogic.com/elearning
From: Shrikant Vashishtha <shrikant.vashishtha @xebia.com> To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com Sent: Mon, February 8, 2010 4:35:57 PM Subject: RE: {Spam?} Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
Ajitesh added valuable and valid points. I don’t want to live in the world of illusion that we have already moved towards post-Agile era. In the whole Agile India 2010 meet I could hardly find a few companies who are already well-versed in Agile and are ready to move even further.
Contrary to number of successful Agile implementations, I see more failures just because the way it has been adopted.
Though Agile adoption has been improving in last couple of years, the reality is – a lot of companies (75%+) still work in Waterfall way or some other non-Agile manner.
With Ajitesh’ analysis I think it’s important to understand why people are not able to move towards Agile so far.
To me, it’s a complete mindset change on management/organiza tional level before you begin implementing Agile on project level.
It requires a good management commitment and good Agile coach who could steer the team/organization in adopting Agile in right way. If for management it’s yet another thing like CMM, CMMI or similar and it has been adopted just for the heck of it (for certification) , failure is assured ;-).
Regards,
-ShriKant
From: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com [mailto:agileindia@ yahoogroups. com] On Behalf Of Ravichandran J.V. Sent: 08 February 2010 13:05 To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com Subject: {Spam?} Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
Ajithesh,
Most of these points you make seem to me to be inspired from surveys and data collected from the web from similar surveys. As we discussed during the Agile India 2010 meet, some people like Naresh and many others in this group have matured so much with Agile that they are looking at beyond Agile.
If Agile has not been adopted well by some companies, it may well be that there must a small % of them compared to those who successfully did.
My two cents is that this discussion on Agile Vs Non is a little dated and perhaps was interesting some three years back. I think you have seen the presentation by Scott Ambler in the below link:
--- On Mon, 2/8/10, Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@ rediffmail. com> wrote:
From: Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@ rediffmail. com> Subject: Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com Date: Monday, February 8, 2010, 6:44 AM
Thanks Siddharta, Naresh and Hari.
I opened this mail chain with a deeper intention.
I agree that it is difficult to get this data of how far Agile is being followed in the industry. As per my corporate experiences so far, I would say the extent of usage is far too limited. This may be 10% or even lesser.
Even in many of the huge companies where we hear that the Agile is being followed, the projects are only in some pockets (again upto 10% only).
Hence, there is a huge opportunity that exists for the widespread of Agile adoption.
Why is the industry so slow in going for Agile? To my mind, some of the following reasons occur:
1. Agile is still misunderstood by many. Still people have myths about Agile and are ignorant of what truly Agile means.
2. Many people do not want to try out something new. They are just scared of doing this.
3. Somebody who understands the subject well will be missing in
most of the companies. In short, there is a lack of Agile experts who can provide the proper guidance and direction.
4. Even if some companies adopt Agile, they adopt it in a highly non-Agile way and finally put the blame on Agile. They read on their own or take training somewhere and try to implement on their own. They end up implementing Agile so badly that they will be doing much worser than their earlier traditional approach.
5. In my observations, the delivery managers and the enginnering communities will be too busy in their delivery cycles. They will not have any time to refer to the literature, understand properly and implement on their own. Also, implementation warrants some good insights, understanding, experience and common sense. The regular teams, however competant they may be in thier day-to-day work, will fail miserably due to the above reasons in their unguided Agile implementations.
This warrants the inevitable and
unavoidable need for Agile coaches and consultants. Either these persons may be employed within the companies or hired directly. Unless the comapnies do this, they will not succeed in their implementation and also bring a bad name to Agile.
6. Hence, it is not enough for the Agile community to just explore and evolve the refined approach, process, tools and techniques. It is also important to highlight that the initial training and process inception happens necessarily with the Agile experts. Once the organisations catch up with the new culture and become established enough, they might be able to go ahead on their own.
7. In some cases, there might be instances where some process thinkers might still differ in their viewpoints. They might still not agree with Agile principles in their own ways and argumentations. However, such detractors would always be prevalent with any school of thought and there may not be anything much done about
these set of people. Despite of this, it would be very interesting and worthwhile to study their arguments so that we might get some valid points that might point to some lapses in Agile as well which can be constructively worked upon to better Agile. (If you are interested, I have one good article which is anti-Agile which I can circulate.)
8. Many a times, in bearaucratic setups and environments, the very setup and structure itself might not be conducive for any advancements. For eg. too much of internal politics, lobbies etc.
This list can grow as other pratctitioners add from their observations and experiences.
Conclusions: It would certainly be worthwhile brainstorming and studying the reasons why Agile is not so widespread yet in the industry. This can lead to many an insight and warrant a lot of action from the Agile community to take far greater steps in leading the industry towards the already pioneered betterments and
revolution. Such a study and action can also make Agile more open for its own evolution, as well as catalyse its own advancements by drawing many more players to its bosom.
Not sure of any report on your 2nd question. I am not sure if there is a company in India which follows either XP or Scrum as per book/guide because we do need customizations in Indian context.
-- Regards, Hariprakash Agrawal (Hari),
An Agile Coach (XP, Scrum), Certified Scrum Master, Trained Six Sigma Black Belt, CMMi Consultant, ISO 9001:2000 Lead Auditor, MTech (Reliability Quality Engg) from IIT-KGP http://opcord. com - OpCord provides
trainings/consultin g on many frameworks/processe s and testing services for organizations
On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 1:34 PM, Naresh Jain wrote:
Agree with Siddharta on the selection bias.
Also what does it mean to follow Agile? If I do some practices does it make me Agile? Are we talking about practices, principles, values, culture? Going down this path just seems like a waste of time.
I would rather ask, what is the problem that you are trying to solve? -- Naresh Jain http://blogs. agilefaqs. com http://agileIndia. org
Is there a survey/study made to find out the the extent of Agile adoption in the SW industry?
Today, what % of s/w companies follow Agile and what % do not follow?
Even if a sw company follows Agile, it may only be to a very limited extent. Hence, the other pertinent question is, what is the % of sw projects that follow Agile and what is the % that do not follow?
Hi Hari,
Some good points. My response inline:
On 09-Feb-10 11:28 AM, Hariprakash Agrawal wrote:
> 2. Indian culture is very different than US, Europe etc and we have
> distributed development, internal politics, high competitions, status
> conscious, hierarchical society (class system), different languages,
> biases towards caste, region etc. All these goes against self
> organizing team behaviour.
I disagree with this. You have politics, competition, status etc
everywhere in the world. It just depends on the company culture. If you
work in a startup in India, you won't have any of that. But if the
company culture reinforces politics, then thats what you get.
> 3. In service industry, they follow what customer wants and usually
> they have less choices to make. Afterall, we are in business due to
> our customers. They all do some kind of expectation setting with
> customers but some customers want more transparency, more rigid
> processes, more documents and they are OK with slow pace. Agile is
> adopted if customer wants it. I am very much Ok with this approach. If
> customer is happy and giving repeat business why to fuss over methodology?
Agreed!
> 4. Management wants more metrics: Company has 200 projects running for
> 100 or more customers hence management needs some indicators (or
> metrics) that what is happening in the projects. Management would like
> to focus more on expanding business rather on tactical things hence
> data driven approach comes. Every PM or PO or SM need to provide some
> information (in form of metrics) to management (or project management
> tools) so that management can asnwer customer queries/escalations all
> the time. Agile might not go well with many metrics.
Not sure if I agree here. Agile has its own set of metrics, like RoI,
throughput, lead time and so one which can be used for managing
portfolios of projects. Quantity of metrics is not important, what
matters is whether you can take strategic decisions based on the metrics.
> 6. We are so many. I have seen having 15 freshers (less than 1 yr
> experience, salary between 2 to 3 Lakhs Rs annually) delivering
> software than 3 senior developers (having -10 yrs experience, salary
> 10-15 Lakhs) and we find it cost effective with freshers. Freshers are
> ready to work late night, on weekends, very flexible, with high IQ,
> high energy hence why should I worry about 3 senior developers.
> 7. High attrition: as I wrote this reason in 'scrumdevelopment'
> yahoogroup and may be, Siddhartha took parallel from there when he
> mentioned about high attrition example in his post. When you have 15
> freshers, someone will leave for even 3.5 lakhs Rs salary which other
> company will offer and self organizing team concept goes for a toss.
> 8. Freshers need more hand-holding: I am coaching 3 teams on agile
> where high number of freshers involved. Manager (or PO) is the most
> senior person and have to hand-hold team. Freshers do not get the self
> organizing team concept because less experience and the inability to
> say 'No' hinders it.
You have described the model pretty well. I had talked to someone else
about the attrition thing, your post reinforced it :)
My gut feeling tells me a team of 3 senior developers can do better than
15 freshers any day, although I don't have any clear data to back this
up. The quality will be better and there is much less communication,
coordination and mentoring overhead. I also disagree that freshers
cannot self organize. Go to a startup and you will see freshers driving
many initiatives. Given the opportunity, they will do it. It is just
that the culture in some companies prevents them from doing this. Of
course you also have to hire the right freshers :)
I feel companies can do better with agile, but there is just too much
cost of change to go about it. The alternative is to adopt agile in
pieces, which is what companies are trying to do.
--
Siddharta Govindaraj
A similar thread is running in "scrumdevelopment" yahoogroup on 'Agile's shortcomings'. May be, you would find it interesting.
Below, I am writing some reasons from Indian service industry perspective and will write later on product industry in India.
1. I don't think any company is using waterfall, we all moved to spiral or iterative development long back. we might not be using iterative development as per agile.
2. Indian culture is very different than US, Europe etc and we have distributed development, internal politics, high competitions, status conscious, hierarchical society (class system), different languages, biases towards caste, region etc. All these goes against self organizing team behaviour.
3. In service industry, they follow what customer wants and usually they have less choices to make. Afterall, we are in business due to our customers. They all do some kind of expectation setting with customers but some customers want more transparency, more rigid processes, more documents and they are OK with slow pace. Agile is adopted if customer wants it. I am very much Ok with this approach. If customer is happy and giving repeat business why to fuss over methodology?
4. Management wants more metrics: Company has 200 projects running for 100 or more customers hence management needs some indicators (or metrics) that what is happening in the projects. Management would like to focus more on expanding business rather on tactical things hence data driven approach comes. Every PM or PO or SM need to provide some information (in form of metrics) to management (or project management tools) so that management can asnwer customer queries/escalations all the time. Agile might not go well with many metrics.
6. We are so many. I have seen having 15 freshers (less than 1 yr experience, salary between 2 to 3 Lakhs Rs annually) delivering software than 3 senior developers (having -10 yrs experience, salary 10-15 Lakhs) and we find it cost effective with freshers. Freshers are ready to work late night, on weekends, very flexible, with high IQ, high energy hence why should I worry about 3 senior developers.
7. High attrition: as I wrote this reason in 'scrumdevelopment' yahoogroup and may be, Siddhartha took parallel from there when he mentioned about high attrition example in his post. When you have 15 freshers, someone will leave for even 3.5 lakhs Rs salary which other company will offer and self organizing team concept goes for a toss.
8. Freshers need more hand-holding: I am coaching 3 teams on agile where high number of freshers involved. Manager (or PO) is the most senior person and have to hand-hold team. Freshers do not get the self organizing team concept because less experience and the inability to say 'No' hinders it.
I can think of so many reasons and may be, will write a paper on it soon.
Regards, Hariprakash Agrawal (Hari), An Agile Coach
(XP, Scrum), Certified Scrum Master, Trained Six Sigma Black Belt, CMMi
Consultant, ISO 9001:2000 Lead Auditor, MTech (Reliability &
Quality Engg) from IIT-KGP http://opcord.com - OpCord provides trainings/consulting on many frameworks/processes and testing services for organizations
On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 2:26 AM, Siddharta Govindaraj <siddharta@...> wrote:
The reason agile is not widely adopted in India is not because
companies are in a dark age.
It's because they have been successful with their current methods for
many years. It has worked for them. Customers are still paying them
good money and they are making good profits. So they have been
reluctant to change. Why fix something that isn't broken?
You mentioned a 150+ waterfall project that was done by 20 people with
agile. But the 150+ waterfall project would still have been profitable
to the company. So it doesn't matter if it could have been done by 20
people. They are happy enough doing it with 150.
This hit home for me when I had a discussion with someone who said
"agile doesn't work in high attrition companies." My first reaction was
"the problem is the attrition, not the process." Then he replied "the
current process works for us, even in high attrition environment."
The bottom line is that these companies are built on a particular model
- large team sizes, globally distributed, high attrition, high
proportion of freshers - and they have something that works in this
model. The entire company is structured around this model. Now if you
ask them to adopt agile, not only have they to change the process, but
also the team structures, the recruitment model, the HR model, the
career ladder, the training method, the payscales... a lot of things.
They have to re-train tens of thousands of employees in a completely
different way of working. Then factor in the learning curve when things
go downhill for a year or two before it goes up. The company has to
evaluate whether doing all this is worth it or not, and what will be
the cost of change.
The goal of a company is not better development or better delivery.
Development doesn't exist in a vacuum, it is there to enable the
organization to achieve its objectives. As long as objectives are being
met, don't expect too much change. When customers start demanding more
visibility, or when profit margins
are severely squeezed, or when they start losing customers to agile
competitors, thats when you will see companies look for alternatives.
Indian companies are doing a little bit of agile here and there. In
most cases, the driver is the customer who have made agile a
precondition for the project. Agile is a good deal for the customer
because they get better visibility and influence into the software.
This has forced companies to start working on agile in these cases.
We
are still talking about decade old concept because majority
of software companies are still living in dark age
It
just doesn’t work if you talk something like post-Agile
in-front of them.
I
know most of biggest technology based companies follow Agile
but most of the biggest services based companies still follow
Waterfall. Most
of the organizations (like banks/retailers/pharmacy chain etc) do not
focus on
cutting-edge technologies that much as it’s not their primary focus
area. As I
myself worked in Waterfall before moving to Agile, I can identify the
question
Ajitesh raised. However, most of the times, it’s because of the reasons
I
mentioned in my last email.
Projects
executed in Agile score highly in terms of focus,
transparency, hyper-productivity and quality. Earlier (with Waterfall)
I used
to work in 150+ team-members team for more than a year and half to
produce
something. These days our biggest projects have a team size of 20 but
still we
could deliver similar size of project in less than a year.
Projects
executed in traditional methodologies miss basic things
like:
1.Focus
and transparency. Most of the biggest projects I worked in
Waterfall, didn’t need me after 2 months but still I had to be
associated with them
doing nothing. So, a lot of waste is inevitable.
2.Continuous
quality improvement as it is difficult to remain a
focus area in the world of manual testing/build.
3.Team
seldom talk together to resolve issues on daily basis. It’s
a world full of chaos.
I
think means and end-product are inter-related as means impact
a lot the end product. But I do agree most of the times we are stuck
just
there.
At
the end, I am not saying waterfall people are stupid or
anything as they still churn a lot of software applications using it.
However I
must say, it’s really time to move on to something much-much better.
Shrikant
is
it safe to conclude that your email suggests that Agile is best &
obviously
better than waterfall and others?
(BTW comparing Agile with Waterfall is like comparing apples to
oranges).
Also can I assume you are telling that all those companies who are
following
waterfall or non-agile way (what ever it means) are stupid and dumb?
Do you know what Twitter uses: Scrum, XP, Crystal, DSDM, Lean? How
about Apple?
Google?
I'm surprised when I hear people say "follow Agile" or "Agile
Adoption". These phrases are almost an oxymoron. (I'm guilt of using
these
phrases myself)
Why are we still stuck with a decade old concept and behave as if its
latest
greatest cutting edge stuff? No doubt there are lots of great things to
learn
from Agile. But seriously, it time to move on...
Instead of asking what is stopping companies from moving towards Agile,
lets
ask what is stopping companies from becoming market leaders? What is
stopping
them from bringing real innovative ideas to life? What is stopping them
from
making our lives better? Why do most people (including ourselves) don't
trust
technology?
I think we are getting caught up in the means and forgetting the end,
the thing
that really matters.
Ajitesh added
valuable and valid points.
I don’t want to live in the world of illusion that we have already
moved
towards post-Agile era. In the whole Agile India 2010 meet I could
hardly
find a few companies who are already well-versed in Agile and are ready
to move
even further.
Contrary to number
of successful Agile
implementations, I see more failures just because the way it has been
adopted.
Though Agile
adoption has been improving
in last couple of years, the reality is – a lot of companies (75%+)
still work
in Waterfall way or some other non-Agile manner.
With Ajitesh’
analysis I think it’s
important to understand why people are not able to move towards Agile
so far.
To me, it’s a
complete mindset change on
management/organiza tional level before you begin implementing Agile
on
project level.
It requires a good
management commitment
and good Agile coach who could steer the team/organization in adopting
Agile in
right way. If for management it’s yet another thing like CMM, CMMI or
similar
and it has been adopted just for the heck of it (for certification) ,
failure
is assured ;-).
Regards,
-ShriKant
From: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com [mailto:agileindia@
yahoogroups. com] On Behalf
Of Ravichandran J.V. Sent: 08 February 2010 13:05 To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com Subject: {Spam?} Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
Ajithesh,
Most of these points you make
seem to me to be inspired from surveys and data collected from the web
from similar surveys. As we discussed during the Agile India 2010 meet,
some people like Naresh and many others in this group have matured so
much with Agile that they are looking at beyond Agile.
If Agile has not been
adopted well by some companies, it may well be that there must a small
% of them compared to those who successfully did.
My two cents is that
this discussion on Agile Vs Non is a little dated and perhaps was
interesting some three years back. I think you have seen the
presentation by Scott Ambler in the below link:
--- On Mon, 2/8/10, Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@ rediffmail.
com> wrote:
From: Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@ rediffmail. com>
Subject: Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com
Date: Monday, February 8, 2010, 6:44 AM
Thanks Siddharta, Naresh and
Hari.
I opened this mail chain with a deeper intention.
I agree that it is difficult to get this data of how far Agile is being
followed in the industry. As per my corporate experiences so far, I
would say the extent of usage is far too limited. This may be 10% or
even lesser.
Even in many of the huge companies where we hear that the Agile is
being followed, the projects are only in some pockets (again upto 10%
only).
Hence, there is a huge opportunity that exists for the widespread of
Agile adoption.
Why is the industry so slow in going for Agile? To my mind, some of the
following reasons occur:
1. Agile is still misunderstood by many. Still people have myths about
Agile and are ignorant of what truly Agile means.
2. Many people do not want to try out something new. They are just
scared of doing this.
3. Somebody who understands the subject well will be missing in most of
the companies. In short, there is a lack of Agile experts who can
provide the proper guidance and direction.
4. Even if some companies adopt Agile, they adopt it in a highly
non-Agile way and finally put the blame on Agile. They read on their
own or take training somewhere and try to implement on their own. They
end up implementing Agile so badly that they will be doing much worser
than their earlier traditional approach.
5. In my observations, the delivery managers and the enginnering
communities will be too busy in their delivery cycles. They will not
have any time to refer to the literature, understand properly and
implement on their own. Also, implementation warrants some good
insights, understanding, experience and common sense. The regular
teams, however competant they may be in thier day-to-day work, will
fail miserably due to the above reasons in their unguided Agile
implementations.
This warrants the inevitable and unavoidable need for Agile coaches and
consultants. Either these persons may be employed within the companies
or hired directly. Unless the comapnies do this, they will not succeed
in their implementation and also bring a bad name to Agile.
6. Hence, it is not enough for the Agile community to just explore and
evolve the refined approach, process, tools and techniques. It is also
important to highlight that the initial training and process inception
happens necessarily with the Agile experts. Once the organisations
catch up with the new culture and become established enough, they might
be able to go ahead on their own.
7. In some cases, there might be instances where some process thinkers
might still differ in their viewpoints. They might still not agree with
Agile principles in their own ways and argumentations. However, such
detractors would always be prevalent with any school of thought and
there may not be anything much done about these set of people. Despite
of this, it would be very interesting and worthwhile to study their
arguments so that we might get some valid points that might point to
some lapses in Agile as well which can be constructively worked upon to
better Agile. (If you are interested, I have one good article which is
anti-Agile which I can circulate.)
8. Many a times, in bearaucratic setups and environments, the very
setup and structure itself might not be conducive for any advancements.
For eg. too much of internal politics, lobbies etc.
This list can grow as other pratctitioners add from their observations
and experiences.
Conclusions:
It would certainly be worthwhile brainstorming and studying the reasons
why Agile is not so widespread yet in the industry. This can lead to
many an insight and warrant a lot of action from the Agile community to
take far greater steps in leading the industry towards the already
pioneered betterments and revolution. Such a study and action can also
make Agile more open for its own evolution, as well as catalyse its own
advancements by drawing many more players to its
bosom.
The reason agile is not widely adopted in India is not because
companies are in a dark age.
It's because they have been successful with their current methods for
many years. It has worked for them. Customers are still paying them
good money and they are making good profits. So they have been
reluctant to change. Why fix something that isn't broken?
You mentioned a 150+ waterfall project that was done by 20 people with
agile. But the 150+ waterfall project would still have been profitable
to the company. So it doesn't matter if it could have been done by 20
people. They are happy enough doing it with 150.
This hit home for me when I had a discussion with someone who said
"agile doesn't work in high attrition companies." My first reaction was
"the problem is the attrition, not the process." Then he replied "the
current process works for us, even in high attrition environment."
The bottom line is that these companies are built on a particular model
- large team sizes, globally distributed, high attrition, high
proportion of freshers - and they have something that works in this
model. The entire company is structured around this model. Now if you
ask them to adopt agile, not only have they to change the process, but
also the team structures, the recruitment model, the HR model, the
career ladder, the training method, the payscales... a lot of things.
They have to re-train tens of thousands of employees in a completely
different way of working. Then factor in the learning curve when things
go downhill for a year or two before it goes up. The company has to
evaluate whether doing all this is worth it or not, and what will be
the cost of change.
The goal of a company is not better development or better delivery.
Development doesn't exist in a vacuum, it is there to enable the
organization to achieve its objectives. As long as objectives are being
met, don't expect too much change. When customers start demanding more
visibility, or when profit margins
are severely squeezed, or when they start losing customers to agile
competitors, thats when you will see companies look for alternatives.
Indian companies are doing a little bit of agile here and there. In
most cases, the driver is the customer who have made agile a
precondition for the project. Agile is a good deal for the customer
because they get better visibility and influence into the software.
This has forced companies to start working on agile in these cases.
We
are still talking about decade old concept because majority
of software companies are still living in dark age
It
just doesn’t work if you talk something like post-Agile
in-front of them.
 I
know most of biggest technology based companies follow Agile
but most of the biggest services based companies still follow
Waterfall. Most
of the organizations (like banks/retailers/pharmacy chain etc) do not
focus on
cutting-edge technologies that much as it’s not their primary focus
area. As I
myself worked in Waterfall before moving to Agile, I can identify the
question
Ajitesh raised. However, most of the times, it’s because of the reasons
I
mentioned in my last email.
 Projects
executed in Agile score highly in terms of focus,
transparency, hyper-productivity and quality. Earlier (with Waterfall)
I used
to work in 150+ team-members team for more than a year and half to
produce
something. These days our biggest projects have a team size of 20 but
still we
could deliver similar size of project in less than a year.
 Projects
executed in traditional methodologies miss basic things
like:
1.     Â
Focus
and transparency. Most of the biggest projects I worked in
Waterfall, didn’t need me after 2 months but still I had to be
associated with them
doing nothing. So, a lot of waste is inevitable.
2.     Â
Continuous
quality improvement as it is difficult to remain a
focus area in the world of manual testing/build.
3.     Â
Team
seldom talk together to resolve issues on daily basis. It’s
a world full of chaos.
 I
think means and end-product are inter-related as means impact
a lot the end product. But I do agree most of the times we are stuck
just
there.
 At
the end, I am not saying waterfall people are stupid or
anything as they still churn a lot of software applications using it.
However I
must say, it’s really time to move on to something much-much better.
Shrikant
is
it safe to conclude that your email suggests that Agile is best &
obviously
better than waterfall and others?
(BTW comparing Agile with Waterfall is like comparing apples to
oranges).
Also can I assume you are telling that all those companies who are
following
waterfall or non-agile way (what ever it means) are stupid and dumb?
Do you know what Twitter uses: Scrum, XP, Crystal, DSDM, Lean? How
about Apple?
Google?
I'm surprised when I hear people say "follow Agile" or "Agile
Adoption". These phrases are almost an oxymoron. (I'm guilt of using
these
phrases myself)
Why are we still stuck with a decade old concept and behave as if its
latest
greatest cutting edge stuff? No doubt there are lots of great things to
learn
from Agile. But seriously, it time to move on...
Instead of asking what is stopping companies from moving towards Agile,
lets
ask what is stopping companies from becoming market leaders? What is
stopping
them from bringing real innovative ideas to life? What is stopping them
from
making our lives better? Why do most people (including ourselves) don't
trust
technology?
I think we are getting caught up in the means and forgetting the end,
the thing
that really matters.
Ajitesh added
valuable and valid points.
I don’t want to live in the world of illusion that we have already
moved
towards post-Agile era. Â In the whole Agile India 2010 meet I could
hardly
find a few companies who are already well-versed in Agile and are ready
to move
even further.
 Contrary to number
of successful Agile
implementations, I see more failures just because the way it has been
adopted.
 Though Agile
adoption has been improving
in last couple of years, the reality is – a lot of companies (75%+)
still work
in Waterfall way or some other non-Agile manner.
 With Ajitesh’
analysis I think it’s
important to understand why people are not able to move towards Agile
so far.
 To me, it’s a
complete mindset change on
management/organiza tional level before you begin implementing Agile
on
project level.
 It requires a good
management commitment
and good Agile coach who could steer the team/organization in adopting
Agile in
right way. If for management it’s yet another thing like CMM, CMMI or
similar
and it has been adopted just for the heck of it (for certification) ,
failure
is assured ;-).
 Regards,
-ShriKant
From: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com [mailto:agileindia@
yahoogroups. com] On Behalf
Of Ravichandran J.V. Sent: 08 February 2010 13:05 To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com Subject: {Spam?} Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
Ajithesh,Â
 Most of these points you make
seem to me to be inspired from surveys and data collected from the web
from similar surveys. As we discussed during the Agile India 2010 meet,
some people like Naresh and many others in this group have matured so
much with Agile that they are looking at beyond Agile.Â
 If Agile has not been
adopted well by some companies, it may well be that there must a small
% of them compared to those who successfully did.
 My two cents is that
this discussion on Agile Vs Non is a little dated and perhaps was
interesting some three years back. I think you have seen the
presentation by Scott Ambler in the below link:
--- On Mon, 2/8/10, Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@ rediffmail.
com> wrote:
From: Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@ rediffmail. com>
Subject: Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com
Date: Monday, February 8, 2010, 6:44 AM
Â
Thanks Siddharta, Naresh and
Hari.
I opened this mail chain with a deeper intention.
I agree that it is difficult to get this data of how far Agile is being
followed in the industry. As per my corporate experiences so far, I
would say the extent of usage is far too limited. This may be 10% or
even lesser.
Even in many of the huge companies where we hear that the Agile is
being followed, the projects are only in some pockets (again upto 10%
only).
Hence, there is a huge opportunity that exists for the widespread of
Agile adoption.
Why is the industry so slow in going for Agile? To my mind, some of the
following reasons occur:
1. Agile is still misunderstood by many. Still people have myths about
Agile and are ignorant of what truly Agile means.
2. Many people do not want to try out something new. They are just
scared of doing this.
3. Somebody who understands the subject well will be missing in most of
the companies. In short, there is a lack of Agile experts who can
provide the proper guidance and direction.
4. Even if some companies adopt Agile, they adopt it in a highly
non-Agile way and finally put the blame on Agile. They read on their
own or take training somewhere and try to implement on their own. They
end up implementing Agile so badly that they will be doing much worser
than their earlier traditional approach.
5. In my observations, the delivery managers and the enginnering
communities will be too busy in their delivery cycles. They will not
have any time to refer to the literature, understand properly and
implement on their own. Also, implementation warrants some good
insights, understanding, experience and common sense. The regular
teams, however competant they may be in thier day-to-day work, will
fail miserably due to the above reasons in their unguided Agile
implementations.
This warrants the inevitable and unavoidable need for Agile coaches and
consultants. Either these persons may be employed within the companies
or hired directly. Unless the comapnies do this, they will not succeed
in their implementation and also bring a bad name to Agile.
6. Hence, it is not enough for the Agile community to just explore and
evolve the refined approach, process, tools and techniques. It is also
important to highlight that the initial training and process inception
happens necessarily with the Agile experts. Once the organisations
catch up with the new culture and become established enough, they might
be able to go ahead on their own.
7. In some cases, there might be instances where some process thinkers
might still differ in their viewpoints. They might still not agree with
Agile principles in their own ways and argumentations. However, such
detractors would always be prevalent with any school of thought and
there may not be anything much done about these set of people. Despite
of this, it would be very interesting and worthwhile to study their
arguments so that we might get some valid points that might point to
some lapses in Agile as well which can be constructively worked upon to
better Agile. (If you are interested, I have one good article which is
anti-Agile which I can circulate.)
8. Many a times, in bearaucratic setups and environments, the very
setup and structure itself might not be conducive for any advancements.
For eg. too much of internal politics, lobbies etc.
This list can grow as other pratctitioners add from their observations
and experiences.
Conclusions:
It would certainly be worthwhile brainstorming and studying the reasons
why Agile is not so widespread yet in the industry. This can lead to
many an insight and warrant a lot of action from the Agile community to
take far greater steps in leading the industry towards the already
pioneered betterments and revolution. Such a study and action can also
make Agile more open for its own evolution, as well as catalyse its own
advancements by drawing many more players to its
bosom.
We are still talking about decade old concept because majority
of software companies are still living in dark age.
It just doesn’t work if you talk something like post-Agile
in-front of them.
I know most of biggest technology based companies follow Agile
but most of the biggest services based companies still follow Waterfall. Most
of the organizations (like banks/retailers/pharmacy chain etc) do not focus on
cutting-edge technologies that much as it’s not their primary focus area. As I
myself worked in Waterfall before moving to Agile, I can identify the question
Ajitesh raised. However, most of the times, it’s because of the reasons I
mentioned in my last email.
Projects executed in Agile score highly in terms of focus,
transparency, hyper-productivity and quality. Earlier (with Waterfall) I used
to work in 150+ team-members team for more than a year and half to produce
something. These days our biggest projects have a team size of 20 but still we
could deliver similar size of project in less than a year.
Projects executed in traditional methodologies miss basic things
like:
1.Focus and transparency. Most of the biggest projects I worked in
Waterfall, didn’t need me after 2 months but still I had to be associated with them
doing nothing. So, a lot of waste is inevitable.
2.Continuous quality improvement as it is difficult to remain a
focus area in the world of manual testing/build.
3.Team seldom talk together to resolve issues on daily basis. It’s
a world full of chaos.
I think means and end-product are inter-related as means impact
a lot the end product. But I do agree most of the times we are stuck just
there.
At the end, I am not saying waterfall people are stupid or
anything as they still churn a lot of software applications using it. However I
must say, it’s really time to move on to something much-much better.
Regards,
-ShriKant
From: agileindia@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:agileindia@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Naresh Jain Sent: 08 February 2010 20:44 To: agileindia@yahoogroups.com Subject: {Spam?} Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
Shrikant is
it safe to conclude that your email suggests that Agile is best & obviously
better than waterfall and others?
(BTW comparing Agile with Waterfall is like comparing apples to oranges).
Also can I assume you are telling that all those companies who are following
waterfall or non-agile way (what ever it means) are stupid and dumb?
Do you know what Twitter uses: Scrum, XP, Crystal, DSDM, Lean? How about Apple?
Google?
I'm surprised when I hear people say "follow Agile" or "Agile
Adoption". These phrases are almost an oxymoron. (I'm guilt of using these
phrases myself)
Why are we still stuck with a decade old concept and behave as if its latest
greatest cutting edge stuff? No doubt there are lots of great things to learn
from Agile. But seriously, it time to move on...
Instead of asking what is stopping companies from moving towards Agile, lets
ask what is stopping companies from becoming market leaders? What is stopping
them from bringing real innovative ideas to life? What is stopping them from
making our lives better? Why do most people (including ourselves) don't trust
technology?
I think we are getting caught up in the means and forgetting the end, the thing
that really matters.
From: Shrikant Vashishtha
<shrikant.vashishtha@...> To: agileindia@yahoogroups.com Sent: Mon, February 8, 2010 4:35:57 PM Subject: RE: {Spam?} Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
Ajitesh added valuable and valid points.
I don’t want to live in the world of illusion that we have already moved
towards post-Agile era. In the whole Agile India 2010 meet I could hardly
find a few companies who are already well-versed in Agile and are ready to move
even further.
Contrary to number of successful Agile
implementations, I see more failures just because the way it has been adopted.
Though Agile adoption has been improving
in last couple of years, the reality is – a lot of companies (75%+) still work
in Waterfall way or some other non-Agile manner.
With Ajitesh’ analysis I think it’s
important to understand why people are not able to move towards Agile so far.
To me, it’s a complete mindset change on
management/organiza tional level before you begin implementing Agile on
project level.
It requires a good management commitment
and good Agile coach who could steer the team/organization in adopting Agile in
right way. If for management it’s yet another thing like CMM, CMMI or similar
and it has been adopted just for the heck of it (for certification) , failure
is assured ;-).
Regards,
-ShriKant
From: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com [mailto:agileindia@ yahoogroups. com] On Behalf
Of Ravichandran J.V. Sent: 08 February 2010 13:05 To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com Subject: {Spam?} Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
Ajithesh,
Most
of these points you make seem to me to be inspired from surveys and data
collected from the web from similar surveys. As we discussed during the Agile
India 2010 meet, some people like Naresh and many others in this group have
matured so much with Agile that they are looking at beyond Agile.
If
Agile has not been adopted well by some companies, it may well be that there
must a small % of them compared to those who successfully did.
My
two cents is that this discussion on Agile Vs Non is a little dated and
perhaps was interesting some three years back. I think you have seen the
presentation by Scott Ambler in the below link:
--- On Mon, 2/8/10, Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@ rediffmail. com>
wrote:
From: Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@ rediffmail. com>
Subject: Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com
Date: Monday, February 8, 2010, 6:44 AM
Thanks Siddharta, Naresh and Hari.
I opened this mail chain with a deeper intention.
I agree that it is difficult to get this data of how far Agile is being
followed in the industry. As per my corporate experiences so far, I would say
the extent of usage is far too limited. This may be 10% or even lesser.
Even in many of the huge companies where we hear that the Agile is being
followed, the projects are only in some pockets (again upto 10% only).
Hence, there is a huge opportunity that exists for the widespread of Agile
adoption.
Why is the industry so slow in going for Agile? To my mind, some of the
following reasons occur:
1. Agile is still misunderstood by many. Still people have myths about Agile
and are ignorant of what truly Agile means.
2. Many people do not want to try out something new. They are just scared of
doing this.
3. Somebody who understands the subject well will be missing in most of the
companies. In short, there is a lack of Agile experts who can provide the
proper guidance and direction.
4. Even if some companies adopt Agile, they adopt it in a highly non-Agile
way and finally put the blame on Agile. They read on their own or take
training somewhere and try to implement on their own. They end up
implementing Agile so badly that they will be doing much worser than their
earlier traditional approach.
5. In my observations, the delivery managers and the enginnering communities
will be too busy in their delivery cycles. They will not have any time to
refer to the literature, understand properly and implement on their own.
Also, implementation warrants some good insights, understanding, experience
and common sense. The regular teams, however competant they may be in thier
day-to-day work, will fail miserably due to the above reasons in their
unguided Agile implementations.
This warrants the inevitable and unavoidable need for Agile coaches and
consultants. Either these persons may be employed within the companies or
hired directly. Unless the comapnies do this, they will not succeed in their
implementation and also bring a bad name to Agile.
6. Hence, it is not enough for the Agile community to just explore and evolve
the refined approach, process, tools and techniques. It is also important to
highlight that the initial training and process inception happens necessarily
with the Agile experts. Once the organisations catch up with the new culture
and become established enough, they might be able to go ahead on their own.
7. In some cases, there might be instances where some process thinkers might
still differ in their viewpoints. They might still not agree with Agile
principles in their own ways and argumentations. However, such detractors
would always be prevalent with any school of thought and there may not be
anything much done about these set of people. Despite of this, it would be
very interesting and worthwhile to study their arguments so that we might get
some valid points that might point to some lapses in Agile as well which can
be constructively worked upon to better Agile. (If you are interested, I have
one good article which is anti-Agile which I can circulate.)
8. Many a times, in bearaucratic setups and environments, the very setup and
structure itself might not be conducive for any advancements. For eg. too
much of internal politics, lobbies etc.
This list can grow as other pratctitioners add from their observations and
experiences.
Conclusions:
It would certainly be worthwhile brainstorming and studying the reasons why
Agile is not so widespread yet in the industry. This can lead to many an
insight and warrant a lot of action from the Agile community to take far
greater steps in leading the industry towards the already pioneered betterments
and revolution. Such a study and action can also make Agile more open for its
own evolution, as well as catalyse its own advancements by drawing many more
players to its
bosom.
Not sure of any report on your 2nd question. I am not sure if there is a
company in India which follows either XP or Scrum as per book/guide because
we do need customizations in Indian context.
--
Regards,
Hariprakash Agrawal (Hari),
An Agile Coach (XP,
Scrum), Certified Scrum Master, Trained Six Sigma Black Belt, CMMi
Consultant, ISO 9001:2000 Lead Auditor, MTech (Reliability
Quality Engg) from IIT-KGP http://opcord. com - OpCord
provides trainings/consultin g on many frameworks/processe s and testing
services for organizations
On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 1:34 PM, Naresh Jain wrote:
Agree with Siddharta on the selection bias.
Also what does it mean to follow Agile? If I do some practices does it make
me Agile? Are we talking about practices, principles, values, culture? Going
down this path just seems like a waste of time.
I would rather ask, what is the problem that you are trying to solve?
--
Naresh Jain http://blogs. agilefaqs. com http://agileIndia. org
Is there a survey/study made to find out the the extent of Agile
adoption in the SW industry?
Today, what % of s/w companies follow Agile and what % do not follow?
Even if a sw company follows Agile, it may only be to a very limited
extent. Hence, the other pertinent question is, what is the % of sw
projects that follow Agile and what is the % that do not follow?
Shrikant is it safe to conclude that your email suggests that Agile is best & obviously better than waterfall and others? (BTW comparing Agile with Waterfall is like comparing apples to oranges).
Also can I assume you are telling that all those companies who are following waterfall or non-agile way (what ever it means) are stupid and dumb?
Do you know what Twitter uses: Scrum, XP, Crystal, DSDM, Lean? How about Apple? Google?
I'm surprised when I hear people say "follow Agile" or "Agile Adoption". These phrases are almost an oxymoron. (I'm guilt of using these phrases myself)
Why are we still stuck with a decade old concept and behave as if its latest greatest cutting edge stuff? No doubt there are lots of great things to learn from Agile. But seriously, it time to move
on...
Instead of asking what is stopping companies from moving towards Agile, lets ask what is stopping companies from becoming market leaders? What is stopping them from bringing real innovative ideas to life? What is stopping them from making our lives better? Why do most people (including ourselves) don't trust technology?
I think we are getting caught up in the means and forgetting the end, the thing that really matters.
From: Shrikant Vashishtha <shrikant.vashishtha@...> To: agileindia@yahoogroups.com Sent: Mon, February 8, 2010 4:35:57 PM Subject: RE: {Spam?} Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
Ajitesh added valuable and valid points. I don’t want to live in
the world of illusion that we have already moved towards post-Agile era. In
the whole Agile India 2010 meet I could hardly find a few companies who are
already well-versed in Agile and are ready to move even further.
Contrary to number of successful Agile implementations, I see
more failures just because the way it has been adopted.
Though Agile adoption has been improving in last couple of
years, the reality is – a lot of companies (75%+) still work in Waterfall way
or some other non-Agile manner.
With Ajitesh’ analysis I think it’s important to understand why
people are not able to move towards Agile so far.
To me, it’s a complete mindset change on management/organiza tional
level before you begin implementing Agile on project level.
It requires a good management commitment and good Agile coach
who could steer the team/organization in adopting Agile in right way. If for
management it’s yet another thing like CMM, CMMI or similar and it has been
adopted just for the heck of it (for certification) , failure is assured ;-).
Regards,
-ShriKant
From: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com
[mailto:agileindia@ yahoogroups. com] On Behalf Of Ravichandran J.V. Sent: 08 February 2010 13:05 To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com Subject: {Spam?} Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
Ajithesh,
Most of these points you make seem to me to be inspired
from surveys and data collected from the web from similar surveys. As we
discussed during the Agile India 2010 meet, some people like Naresh and many
others in this group have matured so much with Agile that they are looking at
beyond Agile.
If Agile has not been adopted well by some companies, it
may well be that there must a small % of them compared to those who
successfully did.
My two cents is that this discussion on Agile Vs Non is a
little dated and perhaps was interesting some three years back. I think you
have seen the presentation by Scott Ambler in the below link:
--- On Mon, 2/8/10, Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@ rediffmail. com>
wrote:
From: Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@ rediffmail. com>
Subject: Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com
Date: Monday, February 8, 2010, 6:44 AM
Thanks Siddharta, Naresh and Hari.
I opened this mail chain with a deeper intention.
I agree that it is difficult to get this data of how far Agile is being
followed in the industry. As per my corporate experiences so far, I would say
the extent of usage is far too limited. This may be 10% or even lesser.
Even in many of the huge companies where we hear that the Agile is being
followed, the projects are only in some pockets (again upto 10% only).
Hence, there is a huge opportunity that exists for the widespread of Agile
adoption.
Why is the industry so slow in going for Agile? To my mind, some of the
following reasons occur:
1. Agile is still misunderstood by many. Still people have myths about Agile
and are ignorant of what truly Agile means.
2. Many people do not want to try out something new. They are just scared of
doing this.
3. Somebody who understands the subject well will be missing in most of the
companies. In short, there is a lack of Agile experts who can provide the
proper guidance and direction.
4. Even if some companies adopt Agile, they adopt it in a highly non-Agile
way and finally put the blame on Agile. They read on their own or take training
somewhere and try to implement on their own. They end up implementing Agile
so badly that they will be doing much worser than their earlier traditional
approach.
5. In my observations, the delivery managers and the enginnering communities
will be too busy in their delivery cycles. They will not have any time to
refer to the literature, understand properly and implement on their own.
Also, implementation warrants some good insights, understanding, experience
and common sense. The regular teams, however competant they may be in thier
day-to-day work, will fail miserably due to the above reasons in their
unguided Agile implementations.
This warrants the inevitable and unavoidable need for Agile coaches and
consultants. Either these persons may be employed within the companies or
hired directly. Unless the comapnies do this, they will not succeed in their
implementation and also bring a bad name to Agile.
6. Hence, it is not enough for the Agile community to just explore and evolve
the refined approach, process, tools and techniques. It is also important to
highlight that the initial training and process inception happens necessarily
with the Agile experts. Once the organisations catch up with the new culture
and become established enough, they might be able to go ahead on their own.
7. In some cases, there might be instances where some process thinkers might
still differ in their viewpoints. They might still not agree with Agile
principles in their own ways and argumentations. However, such detractors would
always be prevalent with any school of thought and there may not be anything
much done about these set of people. Despite of this, it would be very
interesting and worthwhile to study their arguments so that we might get some
valid points that might point to some lapses in Agile as well which can be
constructively worked upon to better Agile. (If you are interested, I have
one good article which is anti-Agile which I can circulate.)
8. Many a times, in bearaucratic setups and environments, the very setup and
structure itself might not be conducive for any advancements. For eg. too
much of internal politics, lobbies etc.
This list can grow as other pratctitioners add from their observations and
experiences.
Conclusions:
It would certainly be worthwhile brainstorming and studying the reasons why
Agile is not so widespread yet in the industry. This can lead to many an
insight and warrant a lot of action from the Agile community to take far
greater steps in leading the industry towards the already pioneered
betterments and revolution. Such a study and action can also make Agile more
open for its own evolution, as well as catalyse its own advancements by
drawing many more players to its
bosom.
Not sure of any report on your 2nd question. I am not sure if there is a
company in India which follows either XP or Scrum as per book/guide because
we do need customizations in Indian context.
--
Regards,
Hariprakash Agrawal (Hari),
An Agile Coach (XP,
Scrum), Certified Scrum Master, Trained Six Sigma Black Belt, CMMi
Consultant, ISO 9001:2000 Lead Auditor, MTech (Reliability
Quality Engg) from IIT-KGP http://opcord. com - OpCord provides trainings/consultin g on many
frameworks/processe s and testing services for organizations
On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 1:34 PM, Naresh Jain wrote:
Agree with Siddharta on the selection bias.
Also what does it mean to follow Agile? If I do some practices does it make
me Agile? Are we talking about practices, principles, values, culture? Going
down this path just seems like a waste of time.
I would rather ask, what is the problem that you are trying to solve?
--
Naresh Jain http://blogs. agilefaqs. com http://agileIndia. org
Is there a survey/study made to find out the the extent of Agile
adoption in the SW industry?
Today, what % of s/w companies follow Agile and what % do not follow?
Even if a sw company follows Agile, it may only be to a very limited
extent. Hence, the other pertinent question is, what is the % of sw
projects that follow Agile and what is the % that do not follow?
Ajitesh added valuable and valid points. I don’t want to live in
the world of illusion that we have already moved towards post-Agile era. Â In
the whole Agile India 2010 meet I could hardly find a few companies who are
already well-versed in Agile and are ready to move even further.
Contrary to number of successful Agile implementations, I see
more failures just because the way it has been adopted.
Though Agile adoption has been improving in last couple of
years, the reality is – a lot of companies (75%+) still work in Waterfall way
or some other non-Agile manner.
With Ajitesh’ analysis I think it’s important to understand why
people are not able to move towards Agile so far.
To me, it’s a complete mindset change on management/organizationalÂ
level before you begin implementing Agile on project level.
It requires a good management commitment and good Agile coach
who could steer the team/organization in adopting Agile in right way. If for
management it’s yet another thing like CMM, CMMI or similar and it has been
adopted just for the heck of it (for certification), failure is assured ;-).
Regards,
-ShriKant
From: agileindia@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:agileindia@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Ravichandran J.V. Sent: 08 February 2010 13:05 To: agileindia@yahoogroups.com Subject: {Spam?} Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
Ajithesh,
Most of these points you make seem to me to be inspired
from surveys and data collected from the web from similar surveys. As we
discussed during the Agile India 2010 meet, some people like Naresh and many
others in this group have matured so much with Agile that they are looking at
beyond Agile.
If Agile has not been adopted well by some companies, it
may well be that there must a small % of them compared to those who
successfully did.
My two cents is that this discussion on Agile Vs Non is a
little dated and perhaps was interesting some three years back. I think you
have seen the presentation by Scott Ambler in the below link:
--- On Mon, 2/8/10, Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@...>
wrote:
From: Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@...>
Subject: Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
To: agileindia@yahoogroups.com
Date: Monday, February 8, 2010, 6:44 AM
Thanks Siddharta, Naresh and Hari.
I opened this mail chain with a deeper intention.
I agree that it is difficult to get this data of how far Agile is being
followed in the industry. As per my corporate experiences so far, I would say
the extent of usage is far too limited. This may be 10% or even lesser.
Even in many of the huge companies where we hear that the Agile is being
followed, the projects are only in some pockets (again upto 10% only).
Hence, there is a huge opportunity that exists for the widespread of Agile
adoption.
Why is the industry so slow in going for Agile? To my mind, some of the
following reasons occur:
1. Agile is still misunderstood by many. Still people have myths about Agile
and are ignorant of what truly Agile means.
2. Many people do not want to try out something new. They are just scared of
doing this.
3. Somebody who understands the subject well will be missing in most of the
companies. In short, there is a lack of Agile experts who can provide the
proper guidance and direction.
4. Even if some companies adopt Agile, they adopt it in a highly non-Agile
way and finally put the blame on Agile. They read on their own or take training
somewhere and try to implement on their own. They end up implementing Agile
so badly that they will be doing much worser than their earlier traditional
approach.
5. In my observations, the delivery managers and the enginnering communities
will be too busy in their delivery cycles. They will not have any time to
refer to the literature, understand properly and implement on their own.
Also, implementation warrants some good insights, understanding, experience
and common sense. The regular teams, however competant they may be in thier
day-to-day work, will fail miserably due to the above reasons in their
unguided Agile implementations.
This warrants the inevitable and unavoidable need for Agile coaches and
consultants. Either these persons may be employed within the companies or
hired directly. Unless the comapnies do this, they will not succeed in their
implementation and also bring a bad name to Agile.
6. Hence, it is not enough for the Agile community to just explore and evolve
the refined approach, process, tools and techniques. It is also important to
highlight that the initial training and process inception happens necessarily
with the Agile experts. Once the organisations catch up with the new culture
and become established enough, they might be able to go ahead on their own.
7. In some cases, there might be instances where some process thinkers might
still differ in their viewpoints. They might still not agree with Agile
principles in their own ways and argumentations. However, such detractors would
always be prevalent with any school of thought and there may not be anything
much done about these set of people. Despite of this, it would be very
interesting and worthwhile to study their arguments so that we might get some
valid points that might point to some lapses in Agile as well which can be
constructively worked upon to better Agile. (If you are interested, I have
one good article which is anti-Agile which I can circulate.)
8. Many a times, in bearaucratic setups and environments, the very setup and
structure itself might not be conducive for any advancements. For eg. too
much of internal politics, lobbies etc.
This list can grow as other pratctitioners add from their observations and
experiences.
Conclusions:
It would certainly be worthwhile brainstorming and studying the reasons why
Agile is not so widespread yet in the industry. This can lead to many an
insight and warrant a lot of action from the Agile community to take far
greater steps in leading the industry towards the already pioneered
betterments and revolution. Such a study and action can also make Agile more
open for its own evolution, as well as catalyse its own advancements by
drawing many more players to its
bosom.
Not sure of any report on your 2nd question. I am not sure if there is a
company in India which follows either XP or Scrum as per book/guide because
we do need customizations in Indian context.
--
Regards,
Hariprakash Agrawal (Hari),
An Agile Coach (XP,
Scrum), Certified Scrum Master, Trained Six Sigma Black Belt, CMMi
Consultant, ISO 9001:2000 Lead Auditor, MTech (Reliability
Quality Engg) from IIT-KGP
http://opcord. com - OpCord provides trainings/consultin g on many
frameworks/processe s and testing services for organizations
On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 1:34 PM, Naresh Jain wrote:
Agree with Siddharta on the selection bias.
Also what does it mean to follow Agile? If I do some practices does it make
me Agile? Are we talking about practices, principles, values, culture? Going
down this path just seems like a waste of time.
I would rather ask, what is the problem that you are trying to solve?
--
Naresh Jain
http://blogs. agilefaqs. com
http://agileIndia. org
http://agilecoachca mp.org
http://sdtconf. com
Learn Code Smells, Refactoring, Patterns and TDD skills at
http://industriallo gic.com/elearnin g
From: Siddharta Govindaraj
To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com
Sent: Fri, February 5, 2010 12:30:07 PM
Subject: Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
There are many such surveys, but most of them suffer from selection
bias. If you keep that in mind, then here are a couple -
Is there a survey/study made to find out the the extent of Agile
adoption in the SW industry?
Today, what % of s/w companies follow Agile and what % do not follow?
Even if a sw company follows Agile, it may only be to a very limited
extent. Hence, the other pertinent question is, what is the % of sw
projects that follow Agile and what is the % that do not follow?
--- On Fri, 2/5/10, Siddharta Govindaraj <siddharta@...> wrote:
From: Siddharta Govindaraj <siddharta@...> Subject: [agileindia] TCS White Paper: Adopting Agile in a Large Scale Distributed Development Environment To: agileindia@yahoogroups.com Date: Friday, February 5, 2010, 11:12 AM
Most of these points you make seem to me to be inspired from surveys and data collected from the web from similar surveys. As we discussed during the Agile India 2010 meet, some people like Naresh and many others in this group have matured so much with Agile that they are looking at beyond Agile.
If Agile has not been adopted well by some companies, it may well be that there must a small % of them compared to those who successfully did.
My two cents is that this discussion on Agile Vs Non is a little dated and perhaps was interesting some three years back. I think you have seen the presentation by Scott Ambler in the below link:
--- On Mon, 2/8/10, Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@...> wrote:
From: Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@...> Subject: Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile To: agileindia@yahoogroups.com Date: Monday, February 8, 2010, 6:44 AM
Thanks Siddharta, Naresh and Hari.
I opened this mail chain with a deeper intention.
I agree that it is difficult to get this data of how far Agile is being followed in the industry. As per my corporate experiences so far, I would say the extent of usage is far too limited. This may be 10% or even lesser.
Even in many of the huge companies where we hear that the Agile is being followed, the projects are only in some pockets (again upto 10% only).
Hence, there is a huge opportunity that exists for the widespread of Agile adoption.
Why is the industry so slow in going for Agile? To my mind, some of the following reasons occur:
1. Agile is still misunderstood by many. Still people have myths about Agile and are ignorant of what truly Agile means.
2. Many people do not want to try out something new. They are just scared of doing this.
3. Somebody who understands the subject well will be missing in most of the companies. In short, there is a lack of Agile experts who can provide the proper guidance and direction.
4. Even if some companies adopt Agile, they adopt it in a highly non-Agile way and finally put the blame on Agile. They read on their own or take training somewhere and try to implement on their own. They end up implementing Agile so badly that they will be doing much worser than their earlier traditional approach.
5. In my observations, the delivery managers and the enginnering communities will be too busy in their delivery cycles. They will not have any time to refer to the literature, understand properly and implement on their own. Also, implementation warrants some good insights, understanding, experience and common sense. The regular teams, however competant they may be in thier day-to-day work, will fail miserably due to the above reasons in their unguided Agile implementations.
This warrants the inevitable and unavoidable need for Agile coaches and consultants. Either these persons may be employed within the companies or hired directly. Unless the comapnies do this, they will not succeed in their implementation and also bring a bad name to Agile.
6. Hence, it is not enough for the Agile community to just explore and evolve the refined approach, process, tools and techniques. It is also important to highlight that the initial training and process inception happens necessarily with the Agile experts. Once the organisations catch up with the new culture and become established enough, they might be able to go ahead on their own.
7. In some cases, there might be instances where some process thinkers might still differ in their viewpoints. They might still not agree with Agile principles in their own ways and argumentations. However, such detractors would always be prevalent with any school of thought and there may not be anything much done about these set of people. Despite of this, it would be very interesting and worthwhile to study their arguments so that we might get some valid points that might point to some lapses in Agile as well which can be constructively worked upon to better Agile. (If you are interested, I have one good article which is anti-Agile which I can circulate.)
8. Many a times, in bearaucratic setups and environments, the very setup and structure itself might not be conducive for any advancements. For eg. too much of internal politics, lobbies etc.
This list can grow as other pratctitioners add from their observations and experiences.
Conclusions:
It would certainly be worthwhile brainstorming and studying the reasons why Agile is not so widespread yet in the industry. This can lead to many an insight and warrant a lot of action from the Agile community to take far greater steps in leading the industry towards the already pioneered betterments and revolution. Such a study and action can also make Agile more open for its own evolution, as well as catalyse its own advancements by drawing many more players to its
bosom.
Not sure of any report on your 2nd question. I am not sure if there is a company in India which follows either XP or Scrum as per book/guide because we do need customizations in Indian context.
--
Regards,
Hariprakash Agrawal (Hari),
An Agile Coach (XP,
Scrum), Certified Scrum Master, Trained Six Sigma Black Belt, CMMi
Consultant, ISO 9001:2000 Lead Auditor, MTech (Reliability
Quality Engg) from IIT-KGP
http://opcord. com - OpCord provides trainings/consultin g on many frameworks/processe s and testing services for organizations
On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 1:34 PM, Naresh Jain wrote:
Agree with Siddharta on the selection bias.
Also what does it mean to follow Agile? If I do some practices does it make me Agile? Are we talking about practices, principles, values, culture? Going down this path just seems like a waste of time.
I would rather ask, what is the problem that you are trying to solve?
--
Naresh Jain
http://blogs. agilefaqs. com
http://agileIndia. org
http://agilecoachca mp.org
http://sdtconf. com
Learn Code Smells, Refactoring, Patterns and TDD skills at
http://industriallo gic.com/elearnin g
From: Siddharta Govindaraj
To: agileindia@yahoogro ups.com
Sent: Fri, February 5, 2010 12:30:07 PM
Subject: Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
There are many such surveys, but most of them suffer from selection
bias. If you keep that in mind, then here are a couple -
Is there a survey/study made to find out the the extent of Agile
adoption in the SW industry?
Today, what % of s/w companies follow Agile and what % do not follow?
Even if a sw company follows Agile, it may only be to a very limited
extent. Hence, the other pertinent question is, what is the % of sw
projects that follow Agile and what is the % that do not follow?
I agree that it is difficult to get this data of how far Agile is being followed in the industry. As per my corporate experiences so far, I would say the extent of usage is far too limited. This may be 10% or even lesser.
Even in many of the huge companies where we hear that the Agile is being followed, the projects are only in some pockets (again upto 10% only).
Hence, there is a huge opportunity that exists for the widespread of Agile adoption.
Why is the industry so slow in going for Agile? To my mind, some of the following reasons occur:
1. Agile is still misunderstood by many. Still people have myths about Agile and are ignorant of what truly Agile means.
2. Many people do not want to try out something new. They are just scared of doing this.
3. Somebody who understands the subject well will be missing in most of the companies. In short, there is a lack of Agile experts who can provide the proper guidance and direction.
4. Even if some companies adopt Agile, they adopt it in a highly non-Agile way and finally put the blame on Agile. They read on their own or take training somewhere and try to implement on their own. They end up implementing Agile so badly that they will be doing much worser than their earlier traditional approach.
5. In my observations, the delivery managers and the enginnering communities will be too busy in their delivery cycles. They will not have any time to refer to the literature, understand properly and implement on their own. Also, implementation warrants some good insights, understanding, experience and common sense. The regular teams, however competant they may be in thier day-to-day work, will fail miserably due to the above reasons in their unguided Agile implementations.
This warrants the inevitable and unavoidable need for Agile coaches and consultants. Either these persons may be employed within the companies or hired directly. Unless the comapnies do this, they will not succeed in their implementation and also bring a bad name to Agile.
6. Hence, it is not enough for the Agile community to just explore and evolve the refined approach, process, tools and techniques. It is also important to highlight that the initial training and process inception happens necessarily with the Agile experts. Once the organisations catch up with the new culture and become established enough, they might be able to go ahead on their own.
7. In some cases, there might be instances where some process thinkers might still differ in their viewpoints. They might still not agree with Agile principles in their own ways and argumentations. However, such detractors would always be prevalent with any school of thought and there may not be anything much done about these set of people. Despite of this, it would be very interesting and worthwhile to study their arguments so that we might get some valid points that might point to some lapses in Agile as well which can be constructively worked upon to better Agile. (If you are interested, I have one good article which is anti-Agile which I can circulate.)
8. Many a times, in bearaucratic setups and environments, the very setup and structure itself might not be conducive for any advancements. For eg. too much of internal politics, lobbies etc.
This list can grow as other pratctitioners add from their observations and experiences.
Conclusions:
It would certainly be worthwhile brainstorming and studying the reasons why Agile is not so widespread yet in the industry. This can lead to many an insight and warrant a lot of action from the Agile community to take far greater steps in leading the industry towards the already pioneered betterments and revolution. Such a study and action can also make Agile more open for its own evolution, as well as catalyse its own advancements by drawing many more players to its
bosom.
Your opinion pls.
Rgds
Ajithesh
On Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:16:46 +0530 wrote
>
Another survey results: http://blogs.forrester.com/product_management/2009/04/the-extended-family-of-agile.html
Not sure of any report on your 2nd question. I am not sure if there is a company in India which follows either XP or Scrum as per book/guide because we do need customizations in Indian context.
--
Regards,
Hariprakash Agrawal (Hari),
An Agile Coach (XP,
Scrum), Certified Scrum Master, Trained Six Sigma Black Belt, CMMi
Consultant, ISO 9001:2000 Lead Auditor, MTech (Reliability
Quality Engg) from IIT-KGP
http://opcord.com - OpCord provides trainings/consulting on many frameworks/processes and testing services for organizations
On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 1:34 PM, Naresh Jain wrote:
Â
Agree with Siddharta on the selection bias.
Also what does it mean to follow Agile? If I do some practices does it make me Agile? Are we talking about practices, principles, values, culture? Going down this path just seems like a waste of time.
I would rather ask, what is the problem that you are trying to solve?
 --
Naresh Jain
http://blogs.agilefaqs.com
http://agileIndia.org
http://agilecoachcamp.org
http://sdtconf.com
Learn Code Smells, Refactoring, Patterns and TDD skills at
http://industriallogic.com/elearning
From: Siddharta Govindaraj
To: agileindia@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Fri, February 5, 2010 12:30:07 PM
Subject: Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
Â
There are many such surveys, but most of them suffer from selection
bias. If you keep that in mind, then here are a couple -
Is there a survey/study made to find out the the extent of Agile
adoption in the SW industry?
Today, what % of s/w companies follow Agile and what % do not follow?
Even if a sw company follows Agile, it may only be to a very limited
extent. Hence, the other pertinent question is, what is the % of sw
projects that follow Agile and what is the % that do not follow?
From:
agileindia@yahoogroups.com [mailto:agileindia@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Hariprakash
Agrawal Sent: Friday, February 05, 2010 4:20 PM To: agileindia@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [agileindia] Agile vs. non-Agile
Not sure of any report on your 2nd question. I am not sure if there is a
company in India which follows either XP or Scrum as per book/guide because we
do need customizations in Indian context.
--
Regards,
Hariprakash Agrawal (Hari),
An Agile Coach (XP, Scrum), Certified Scrum Master, Trained Six Sigma Black
Belt, CMMi Consultant, ISO 9001:2000 Lead Auditor, MTech (Reliability &
Quality Engg) from IIT-KGP http://opcord.com - OpCord provides
trainings/consulting on many frameworks/processes and testing services for
organizations
On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 1:34 PM, Naresh Jain <nashjain@...> wrote:
Agree
with Siddharta on the selection bias.
Also what does it mean to follow Agile? If I do some practices does it make me
Agile? Are we talking about practices, principles, values, culture? Going down
this path just seems like a waste of time.
I would rather ask, what is the problem that you are trying to solve?
Is there a
survey/study made to find out the the extent of Agile adoption in the SW
industry?
Today, what % of s/w companies follow Agile and what % do not follow?
Even if a sw company follows Agile, it may only be to a very limited extent.
Hence, the other pertinent question is, what is the % of sw projects that
follow Agile and what is the % that do not follow?
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Not sure of any report on your 2nd question. I am not sure if there is a company in India which follows either XP or Scrum as per book/guide because we do need customizations in Indian context.
-- Regards, Hariprakash Agrawal (Hari),
An Agile Coach (XP,
Scrum), Certified Scrum Master, Trained Six Sigma Black Belt, CMMi
Consultant, ISO 9001:2000 Lead Auditor, MTech (Reliability &
Quality Engg) from IIT-KGP http://opcord.com - OpCord provides trainings/consulting on many frameworks/processes and testing services for organizations
On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 1:34 PM, Naresh Jain <nashjain@...> wrote:
Agree with Siddharta on the selection bias.
Also what does it mean to follow Agile? If I do some practices does it make me Agile? Are we talking about practices, principles, values, culture? Going down this path just seems like a waste of time.
I would rather ask, what is the problem that you are trying to solve?
Is there a survey/study made to find out the the extent of Agile
adoption in the SW industry?
Today, what % of s/w companies follow Agile and what % do not follow?
Even if a sw company follows Agile, it may only be to a very limited
extent. Hence, the other pertinent question is, what is the % of sw
projects that follow Agile and what is the % that do not follow?
Also what does it mean to follow Agile? If I do some practices does it make me Agile? Are we talking about practices, principles, values, culture? Going down this path just seems like a waste of time.
I would rather ask, what is the problem that you are trying to solve?
Is there a survey/study made to find out the the extent of Agile
adoption in the SW industry?
Today, what % of s/w companies follow Agile and what % do not follow?
Even if a sw company follows Agile, it may only be to a very limited
extent. Hence, the other pertinent question is, what is the % of sw
projects that follow Agile and what is the % that do not follow?
Is there a survey/study made to find out the the extent of Agile
adoption in the SW industry?
Today, what % of s/w companies follow Agile and what % do not follow?
Even if a sw company follows Agile, it may only be to a very limited
extent. Hence, the other pertinent question is, what is the % of sw
projects that follow Agile and what is the % that do not follow?
Is there a survey/study made to find out the the extent of Agile adoption in the SW industry?
Today, what % of s/w companies follow Agile and what % do not follow?
Even if a sw company follows Agile, it may only be to a very limited extent. Hence, the other pertinent question is, what is the % of sw projects that follow Agile and what is the % that do not follow?
Having returned from a very valuable Agile India 2010 conference, I would like to share my learnings and experience with all you Noida & Delhi guys.
So, please take some time from your schedules and let us plan a meet on Wednesday, 10th February, 6:30 Pm, over some refreshing snacks and drinks (sponsors will be loved and gifted with a special chocolate pastry!) at the same location (at Nirula's, Sec 2, Noida) as the 1st meet.
Please reply (my mobile is not working currently...will set it right soon) to this email or to my personal id - jvravichandran@...
By exercises, I mean the ones which are generally employed in Agile workshops to the participants so that the participants would get a reasonably good idea of the process. For eg., in the xp123 link that Naresh mentioned, I found the exercise on Standup quite a good one (I have seen that Pete Deemer employs a similar exercise in his CSM course).
Rgds
Ajithesh
On Wed, 03 Feb 2010 07:09:34 +0530 wrote
>
Ajithesh,
I am trying to understand your query, what do you mean by exercises and their objectives?, could you elaborate on this so that I
can help you in a better way?
Â
Cheers,
Shaik CSM, PMP
On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 11:41 AM, Ajithesh wrote:
Â
Hi,
Are there good exercises on the various Agile/Scrum topics (eg. Planning Poker, Scrum Planning and so on) that are freely available on the web?
I am trying to understand your query, what do you mean by exercises and their objectives?, could you elaborate on this so that I can help you in a better way?
Cheers, Shaik CSM, PMP
On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 11:41 AM, Ajithesh <ajithesh_gh@...> wrote:
Hi,
Are there good exercises on the various Agile/Scrum topics (eg. Planning Poker, Scrum Planning and so on) that are freely available on the web?
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