Borland and The Accidental Agilist
Borland recently reposted one of Rich Mironov’s widely-read recent articles about product management and the move to Agile, “The Accidental Agilist,” in their Agile Transformation Forum. See the full article on the Borland site or here on the Enthiosys site.
This Product Byte starts with…
“Throughout 2008, we’ve heard from software product managers and product/marketing executives who come back from extended road trips to discover that engineering has “gone Agile.” Since they represent the “business” side of software, they wonder how development’s shift to Agile will change the broader software marketing/selling/strategy process. They also need to consider how to stay plugged into the technical organization so that major shifts in the software creation process don’t go unnoticed.
What we see at Enthiosys is that Agile delivers more and better software; that product managers are an irreplaceable part of that improvement; and the product management function needs to be a champion of business improvements. More generally, product managers/marketers are the communications gateway to the rest of the company: they need to advertise how Agile will improve (and change) life for other departments. C-level executives should be learning how Agile improves the bottom line.
Where is the Push for Agile Coming From?
Software development works better under Agile – and almost everything is software under the covers. Software arrives faster, with higher quality, and with fewer huge strategic gaffes than waterfall models. That translates directly into measurable savings in cost and time, higher predictability, and sometimes improved revenue. The chance to boost development throughput by 30-40% energizes CFOs,CIOs and CEOs, not just VPs of Engineering. This is no longer a “pick your poison” or religious discussion.
07 Nov 2008 | Source: Borland
