AGILE: What Is “Real” Agile? Part 1: Understand “Real” Agile

At the turn of the century, a new wave began to move through the product delivery Arena. This wave that began as a ripple in 1986, and then entered the arena information technology in 1993, has now become a tidal wave, sweeping through our businesses. It is known simply by the term “Agile”.

Our major focus within this course is to look at the delivery of products, especially in the arena of Information Technology. In this arena we call I.T., the agile philosophy is making a world of difference in areas such as commercial off-the-shelf software implementation, software-as-a-service implementation, platform-as-a-service implementation, and infrastructure-as-a-service implementation. Especially, major differences are being seen in the area of custom software development. It does not matter whether you “rent”, “buy”, or “build” software, agile will increase the chances of success greatly.

However, let us take a step back here with some explanation of what has driven me to prepare these courses. As I journey from company to company, and organization to organization, I continually hear the statement ” we are agile!”. When asked by what is meant within that particular organization by the term agile, I hear many different definitions and interpretations of what the word “Agile” really means.

What is troubling with all of this, is that many of these organizations are failing in their attempts to deliver products developed in as they say it, “agile”. In my journeys, I continually hear the words, “agile does not work for us”. When I ask why it doesn’t work, I hear the statement “we tried it and it was no different then what we traditionally have done. When I ask, “explain to me what you mean by agile, and how you have implemented it within your organization”, I am astounded by what I hear. It is in no way agile but some combination and permutation of a traditional approach, usually waterfall with one or two techniques that are used in Agile thrown in the mix.

Therefore, with that said, our intent with this first course is to clarify what this Arena called Agile is really about. What does it really mean? We want to ensure that everyone is working from a level platform.

In Part 1, we take a bit of a different approach. We begin the 2 part series on what Agile is, by explaining to you what it is not. This will be eye-opening to a large number of you who take the time to go through it all.

As you progress through the courses that we present, the importance of this first course is that it begins to lay the foundation for success in agile which comes from a true understanding of what Agile really is.

Key Concepts Covered Here:

• Industry credibility.
• Organizations that use Agile.
• Jobs available with Agile
• What Agile is not.
• continued to Part 2

Sit back and enjoy what you are about to discover. It will change your life!

We Are AGILE!