This is no plagiarism. My intention was not to pickup some perfect lines from here and there, but to rationalize a thought process. A thinking that keeps me asking to myself: Are organizations becoming great by adopting Agile Programming?
There is no denying that in an environment of continuous change demand for more agility from the business support functions are at historic high. At the same time, dependence on IT to run business and deliver goods & services are increasing like never before. Combining these two, the flexibility of the IT systems and processes to respond to ever-changing demand becomes the contributor to the business success. Certainly, Agile Programming can help in removing the inflexibility of the IT systems and processes by adopting some of its proven practices.
However, the agility may bring some compromises as well. While Agile methods don't explicitly denounce any structured approach and the need for documentation, there is a subtle ignorance towards this. Programmers love Agile Programming because quite often it relieves them from doing the mundane documentation, or following some lengthy processes. This is a dangerous trap. Sooner, the organization would either become captive to those rogue programmers due to their know-it-all attitude, or it would succumb to the fact that the IT systems are no longer maintainable. Yours truly had a recent experience of the latter situation, where a great software application became miserable and painful just because it was no longer maintainable, and nobody knew the inbuilt functionality well enough to develop a new application. So, Agile Programming is not necessarily a path towards greatness.
Many companies have adopted the process standards like CMMI, and Six Sigma for their IT organization to ensure proper adherence to the processes and fostering an environment to improve. CMMI, if effectively implemented, can be helpful in having a great structure in place for IT work. Six Sigma can help in removing all the wasteful processes and steps thus making the CMMI structure quite efficient. None of these two have any conflict with Agile programming, and can very well embrace some of the proven best practices like pair programming and scrums. Such a combination may bring some amount of greatness within the IT organization.
Unfortunately, there are not enough takers of such a theory, let alone practice it. Of late, the proponents of Agile have started denouncing that there are conflicts between Agile and CMMI. They are also openly encouraging the need for documentation within an Agile process. All these are good sign. It also shows a desperation to become mainstream practice for software development. But to make an IT organization great, only Agile may not be enough.
