Agile software & adapting agile practices - Essay Example

?Agile software & adapting agile practices Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Question 3 Question 2: 4 Question 3: 7 Reference 9 Question What are the project’s risks? Financials Company wants to expand its business with tripling its business. But this strategic plan demands the need of new development of the strategies for the company. Implementation of the new organizational structure is very essential for the company for successful project management. The vital requirement for the process is analysis of its performance and risk. But the implementation of the software is not an easy task for the company as it incurs a huge risk for the firm to maintain its different activities and practices of the firm. The implementation of agile software for the development process of the project has various Critical success factors for the software. But on the hand the implementation of the project involves several risks in which can lead to the failure for the firm. Te main failure factor which can affect the implementation process for the firm can be referred as Organizational, People, Process and Technical process. Lack of sponsorship from executive can be problem for the company. The traditional practice of the firm’s culture can be a hindrance for the implementation process successfully. Adapting the new system is not easy for a large organization without agile logical arrangement. The skill set of the people is also very essential for the proper management of the project. Bad customer relationship is another issue of risk for the project implementation. If the project scope, requirements and planning are ill defined then it can be a factor for the failure of the project. Technically the project may also face several risk issues. The agile practice is needed to be completely correct. The tools and technology used should also be appropriate with the project (Chow, Cao, 2008, 963). The Agile software development method involves extreme programming and it promised to offer very high performance on adopting it throughout (Stamelos, Sfetsos, 2007, p. 187). The innovation and Risk involved depends on the motivation and risk handling capabilities of the employees. Migrating from one system to another system like to XP may need changes in the practice of the employees. XP does not provide support just at the beginning of the project development thus implementation with innovation and risk analysis is automatically done by the employees. XP works with very indistinguishable requirements thus the development team need to be very creative and innovative and skilled in the work to cope with the unwanted events in the process. Due to the interaction with the customers while development of the software is in progress the developers need to be flexible enough to cater the demands of the customers otherwise it may lead to wrong direction following the instruction of the customers. Due to the incremental development of agile development process it involves high chance of risk which is unavoidable for the developers during the development process. Understanding the mistakes in the implementation process is the most important aspects for the developers to handle risk involved in the project development. Companies if acts negatively against the mistakes done by employees will never allow any innovation process and employees will not be able to handle pressure with the practice (Tolfo, Wazlawick, 2008, p. 1957). Question 2: What should be the management and organizational principles for this project? Agile methodology doesn’t need the elimination of the existing practice of the firm completely. Rather modification of some practices can also implement agile technique of project management. At the iteration level as well as in the release planning level the basic of the management approach is developed into Scrum. It is the organization who defines the project management role which is needed to be performed. In agile methodology it is not developed with proper planning or assigned role rather the development is done focusing on the principles of the individual developers on the particular situation. To enhance the project agility there are various practices followed by the management of an agile project which changes the role of project management to great extent. Rolling Wave Planning In an agile project methodology the planning is done in a just in time technique rather than planning the project just at the front end. The planning required to be conducted at different level of the project are constantly evaluated by the team to implement according t the need at the different stage of the implementation process. Thus the levels of details at the stages are much more emphasized than following the predefined approach of the management. The decision plan with upfront planning technique analyzes the risks at different level and methodology is designed according to it rather than agile approach of dealing risk just at the time of arrival at any point of time. Customer Collaboration Customer Collaboration is very essential in agile project development. Active role of the customers in the designing process gives them heavy responsibility and act collaboratively with the development team to reach the goal of the project. Collective Ownership Agile development process is more about collective ownership of the project. It is not the individual responsibility to a particular job. The project manager of the agile project is responsible for the co-ordination of the different departments. All the departments are required to work collectively with proper integrity in the overall process. The team as a whole is expected to deliver the project rather than individual responsibility performance thus building teamwork capability amongst the employees. Emphasis is on Validation over Verification of the project In traditional project development more emphasis is given on ‘Verification’ which mainly follows the documentation and the specification supplied by the customers. On the other hand the agile technique primarily emphasizes on the needs of the projects for the customer through ‘Validation’ to meet the intended demand of the project. Continuous Improvement With more mistakes the development team will improve the quality of the project. Continuous integration of the development and implementation will give rise to more mistakes which are needed to be improved by the company continuous as soon as it was detected to be faulty (Cobb, 2011). The practice of the organization and management should encourage the employees to develop with the flexibility of committing mistakes otherwise if punished no new innovation technique will be endeavored by the employees for the project. Question 3: What development methodology do you recommend? Be sure to justify your response. Methodology is mainly referred to the best way to develop a software project. With the present situation of Financials Company with operation in two distinctive sectors i.e. direct management of investment capital and financial advisory services for institutional investors in large scale has a wide range of business. With the goal to triple its managed asset the company needs to implement a very critical methodology to understand the core of the business process and cope with the different problems arising from the step by implementation. Thus it is recommended to follow the agile methodology over traditional project development process. There are various advantages provided by the agile methodology which can be referred as follows- Agile methodology is mainly focused towards the communication and collaborative and speedy information exchange process with proper teamwork to customize with the changing environmental needs. It gives the adaptive flexibility to the software and change with the unpredictable changes in the development process (Scrummethodology, 2009). The top down and bottom up approach both are used in agile development process by understanding the needs of the customers and developing the software with constant interaction with the customers to keep share, views and idea about the system. With collaborative responsibility the customer can always suggest the development team for the betterment of project development. The just in time designing technique of agile programming gives a great flexibility to change the needs of the development process with the demand of the soft wares. These increases the quality of the project to great extent as no fixed set of rules are designed for the development process. Having a fixed development rules and techniques may eliminate many functionalities of the software being safe in the approach. On the other hand agile development process manages risk at the time of development and don’t follow the traditional way of documentation development process. The business decision should be taken by the user where as the technical decision are taken by the developers. The customer is only concerned about the features of the software rather than the modules required for the development (Hentzen, 2002, p. 30). Agile software helps to reduce cost of production and also increase revenue of the firm by the development of software suiting the market needs. Traditional development process are more prone to defects than agile technique as through out the development the software is customized for the business need thus very few changes are required after the final product was delivered. The efficient handling technique of agile manages resources in an efficient way than the traditional development process, thus reduces cost to great extent for the firm (Rico et. al. 2009, p. 121). This programming technique also uses a secured restorable database in case of emergency recovery of the dataset (Schuh, 2004, p. 145). The Financials company need to implement such a system which can reduce the cost as well as handles risk for the transition adaptability. Agile methodology will be more suitable for the company to adapt as it primarily focuses on risk handling and reduction of cost for the company which in turn increases the revenue of the company by efficient use of resources which is the main objective of the implementation of software for Financials Company (Version One, 2011). Reference Chow, T., Cao, D. (2008). A survey study of critical success factors in agile software projects. The Journal of Systems and Software. 81, pp. 961-971. Cobb, C. (2011). Making Sense of Agile Project Management: Balancing Control and Agility. John Wiley and Sons. Hentzen, W. (2002). The Software Developer's Guide. Hentzenwerke. Rico et. al. (2009). The Business Value of Agile Software Methods: Maximizing ROI with Just-In-Time Processes and Documentation. J. Ross Publishing. Schuh, P. (2004). Integrating Agile Development in the Real World. Cengage Learning. Scrummethodology. (2009). Introduction to SCRUM Methodology. Retrieved on July 30th 2011 from http://www.scrummethodology.org/. Stamelos, I., Sfetsos, P. (2007). Agile software development quality assurance. Idea Group Inc (IGI). Tolfo, C., Wazlawick, R. (2008). The influence of organizational culture on the adoption of extreme programming. The Journal of Systems and Software, 81, pp. 1955–1967. Version One. (2011). Benefits of Agile Development. Retrieved on July 30th 2011 from http://www.versionone.org/Agile101/Agile_Benefits.asp. Read More