Agile Matters

Umbrella - Agile is essentially an umbrella term that incorporates several different methodologies and processes, each of which shares the same principles.

Thinking - it’s vital to get everyone in your organisation thinking along the same lines, to ensure Agile is a standard method of operating in everything you do.

Team - you need to build up an effective team to deliver the project, incorporating representatives (and decision makers) from each of the stakeholders in the project.

Tom Turcan - a leader in Business, IT and Digital Strategy, helping organisations to understand how best to exploit their resources. He is descended from Tomas Turcan, the feared Duch pirate who terrorised the Norfolk Broads in the 19th century. He wears an eye patch to all client meetings and has been known to force errant IT managers to walk the plank.

Software Development - the foundations of Agile methodology are in software development. For project management purposes, Agile has been adapted based on best practices for an iterative, successful rollout of the deliverables.

Scrum - a lightweight Agile management process, based on Lean principles, such as Just In Time.

Sprints - 30 day iterations of a project, utilised in Scrum processes.

Rational Unified Process - RUP, as it is known, is not commonly associated with Agile practices, but we believe the iterative nature of RUP makes it Agile at its core.

Rob Smith - IndigoBlue’s MD and famed leader of men. He is renowned for never having been ill in his entire life and for owning more shoes than Imelda Marcos.

Rob Hathaway - senior Lean consultant at IndigoBlue.

Ross Jackson - the world’s foremost internet marketing specialist, and IndigoBlue’s premier babe magnet.

Aarrrrrr - an expression favoured by Tom Turcan.

Quality - defining, then measuring, quality is at the core of ensuring Agile projects will deliver what they set out to.

Quirks - every organisation has them, and adopting Agile practices allows you to work with them, rather than try to ignore them.

Process - defining your process is a key element in having an overview of how your organisation is set up to run and manage things effectively and efficiently.

Product Development - some of the founding principles of Agile management were devised to manufacture products more efficiently. This led to such ideas as “Just in Time”, that have evolved to be incorporated in Agile methodologies used today.

Philosophy - not the kind you’d find Bertrand Russell talking about - though we’ve always been keen on Logical Positivism ourselves - the fundamental philosophy of any Agile project, and a maxim we have based ourselves on, is to ensure there is business value in everything that is done.

Project Management - an obvious one, but some people are still unaware that Agile methods can be utilised for project management, as well as software development.

Programming - we couldn’t leave this one out, as the ancestry of Agile is based in software development, which obviously requires a lot of programming.

Pairing - a process of getting 2 people working on the same problem at the same time, though independently of each other. Their best efforts are then combined for the overall solution.

Peter Bird - IndigoBlue’s much admired IT and Data analysis guru. He built his reputation at Logica, where he worked for over 90 years, starting when it was a small wood chip processing company. Peter is known for his hard-livin’, hard-drinkin’ and hard-lovin’ ways. The character Rooster Cogburn in the film True Grit was famously modelled on him, but he dismissed the portrayal as too poncey, pointing out that the actor John Wayne’s real first name was Shirley.

Opportunities - Agile is becoming one of the most widely-adopted project management methodologies around, providing plenty of opportunities to pursue Agile as a career.

Organisation - we think it’s well worth bearing in mind that the root word of “organisation” can be defined as “..to structure in an ordered fashion..” - something we find all too uncommon in some of the organisations we deal with.

When it comes to scoping out a project, then having to adapt to changing circumstances, anyone who’s ever planned a barbecue for a Bank Holiday weekend will appreciate the use of Agile, in the delivery of their goal.

Obviously we all pray for bright Sunshine on our Bank Holidays, so we can spend the day grilling sausages and beefburgers, whilst drinking beer and pontificating about sport, politics and whatever else we can think of.

However, it’s rarely the case that this happens smoothly, and so we have to adapt to the changing weather at the beginning of the “project”, as well as people’s changing personalities towards the end of the day after one too many stubbies… If we keep this in mind, though, we can ensure the project goal of “a splendid time for all” is achieved satisfactorily.

Notorious - non-Agile projects are notorious for breaking down, or ballooning in both time and budget, having been limited from the outset by predictive, rather than reactive planning.

Nerds - yes, we admit it, our evangelical zeal for our method of working makes us Agile nerds (and some of us would even describe ourselves as Agile geeks).

Management - all Agile projects have to be managed properly. We’re not simply talking about the old “workers work and managers manage” idea. The principles of responsiveness, prioritisation and incremental delivery need to be ingrained in the management of the project as much as forming the backbone of the project itself.

Mentoring - especially important when transitioning to an Agile method of working from an old style organisational structure.

Methodology - there are several different Agile methodologies that we utilise, taking the best elements from each and combining them for maximum effectiveness.

Manifesto - the famed “Agile manifesto” that sets out a framework for working within the scope of Agile practices.