The Needs of Rapid System Development
Given the constantly evolving and dynamic nature of the information technology industry, practitioners have found a classic project management method which is often known as the Waterfall method, but ironically this method cannot cope with the complex business environment, which is full of uncertainty in the project.
Few uncertainties that have impacts on information technology development projects in the corporation:
- The need for adoption of changing requirements
- The influence of the external environment (IT vendor) who implements the system with agile methodologies, so that it has an influence on the corporation’s internal environment in system development.
Agile Mindset as The Solution
Currently, agile methods are widely used in the information technology industry, although the idea of agile itself is not from the information technology industry, but from the manufacturing industry in the early 1980s, known as the lightweight method.
Specifically, agile project management is the activity of managing uncertainty and complexity by achieving the agility of a project through the use of an iterative and incremental approach, where success depends on the cooperation and involvement of the developer and project stakeholders, to jointly understand the domain, to identify what needs to be done, built, and prioritize the desired functionality.
As seen in the chart above, the difference between the waterfall method and agile, where in the waterfall the scope of the project is fixed, written in the contract, while the timeline is not fixed, this is what causes the waterfall project to take longer. In addition, this method cannot answer the additional requirements, because the project scope is fixed. If necessary, additional requirements can be made after the system developed is live.
The right chart is Agile, the difference is that the scope is not fixed (changes in requirements can be done) within the provided timeline. This makes agile methods be the answer for rapid system development and accommodates additional requirements.
How Corporation Be Able To Adapt Agile Project Management
Changing the habit of working in a large organization is not an easy job, especially if it is entrenched. There are two fundamental things that need to be changed so that the company’s organization can adapt to agile, namely culture and project management.
Culture
Leaders need to identify the culture that exists in their organization, as a brief guide to identifying the following four types of culture:
Of the four types of culture, the easiest to adapt is the third (Development Culture) where the team’s growth is in the form of creativity and the ability to adapt to the external environment.
Conversely, a culture that emphasizes high control through strict regulations will be more difficult.
Project Management
System development is managed by project management. The following is the difference between project management using waterfall (left) and agile (right). These differences become the initial reference for adapting to agile.
Because the situation of each corporation is different from each other, it is advisable to also explore other things besides the two fundamental things, for example related to procurement whether using a contract or PO, related to the budget whether project-based or product-based, and so on.
Author: Hendrix Yapputro M.Sc., Certified IT Architect, Certified Agile explorer – General Manager PT Equine Global
