You know that feeling when you hear a song and it matches your mood perfectly? Or, when you’re driving across the city and somehow manage to breeze through traffic signals hitting all the green lights? That feeling when you are strolling through Facebook and come across a quote that resonates with your exact sentiment in that moment?
When you are fumbling around in your front seat of your car – coffee in hand, balancing your laptop on your leg and biting into your cream cheese dripping bagel- trying to get your seat belt on and then finally… that lovely click.
Ok, ok, enough with the descriptions. You get it. It’s when something clicks. When something feels right and makes logical sense. This is how I felt at the Agile Alliance’s Annual conference, Agile 2014, last week. While I had the calendar on my Agile 2014 iPhone App, filled with sessions that I wanted to attend, I was busy running around organizing meetings, Instagram’ing, Facebook’ing, Tweeting, Pinning, networking and ‘manning’ our booth for the expo hours.
Being an exhibitor, in a marketing role and not attending sessions may make you wonder then, how I could have had that feeling. I’ll tell you what it was – the conversations. Whether it was a brief 2 minute conversation about the conference while folks were lined up at the buffet line for lunch, or a lengthier 15 minute conversation when someone made it a point to connect with us at our booth and learn more about what we do. It was clear to me that we were not only at the right conference, but that we have the right solutions, the right expertise, and that there is a great need for our services.
Having missed the last year’s Agile conference in Nashville, after taking a year off from the agile world, I wasn’t sure what to expect as far as enterprise agile adoption, concepts around scaling agile practices, knowledge of the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe), DevOps experience and the uptake of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools. All of those topics were at the forefront of my mind when we were walking into the Gaylord Palms Resort Orlando. In my previous life, I had gone to Agile shows, and I had done my due-diligence on the conference itself, so I knew that it was going to be a good fit for us – but I still had those lingering questions. Are people going to be interested in what we have to say? Is there a need for our services? Is this going to be the right audience for us? Is our messaging on point? (Of course I had these questions – I am our marketer after all!) The answer to my questions – was a resounding “YES!”
Through the conversations at our booth, I learned that scaling agile practices from the Team Level to the Program and Portfolio level is truly one of the most critical needs for enterprise organizations today.
This adoption simply has to take place in order achieve an effective agile transformation (and a high performing organization) but so many struggle with this transition. Whether it’s not having a framework to help with the adoption, not having business buy-in, appropriate coaching or a technology war, organizations are having a difficult time with this delicate – Ok daunting ‘task’ – of scaling agile at the enterprise level. I didn’t love knowing organizations – people are struggling with this, but I did love knowing that we can help from a process and tools aspect as well as people by providing expertise using a proven framework (SAFe™), on-site consultants and online guided mentors (powered by bluejazz™). Click.
The DevOps movement is in full swing.
People are beginning to understand the concepts around DevOps and that those that have incorporated DevOps into their software development life cycle (SDLC) have a great need for automating their DevOps practices. Right? Yes, that’s right. But even though there is an understanding, well-developed studies and publications on what DevOps is – when talking about a set of concepts – things can get ‘cloudy,’ or maybe even ‘fluffy.’ What is this DevOps and why is it so important to automate it? Feel free to correct me if I’m mistaken, but it occurred to me, that if an enterprise organization – with interdependent teams is operating using an agile approach (ability to respond to change, cross-functional and self-organized teams, adaptive planning etc.), then operations and development must participate together throughout the SDLC – from the front end (design) to development, delivery and support to monitoring and optimization. From an agile transformation standpoint, agile and DevOps go hand-in-hand – or rather, if an organization is undergoing an agile transformation, DevOps will be an integral piece tightly woven into the cloth. Knowing that we have a solution from a process and tools perspective in this space gave me comfort and assurance – it was difficult to not just smile the entire time when asked if we can help with DevOps – and automating their practices. Another… click.
People… process… and what’s the other one? Technology.
No matter which way we slice it, after whiteboards, sticky notes and planning poker, there is still ultimately going to be a need for tools. At the enterprise level, having a ALM solution that supports an organizations’ agile implementation is vital. I don’t mean just delivering on cadence (or ideally faster) and taking an iterative approach (although those are great perks to agile). I mean refining what’s going into the portfolio, prioritizing and selecting the right investments, ensuring that the right features are being built, and ultimately delivering the right products and to the right audience. Can this business and IT alignment occur without a tool? Sure – but it’s a heck of a lot easier with one and, I’m going to go out on limb here, and say that it would not be possible to repeat that process and continuously deliver value without a reliable tool solution. Being a business partner of IBM and having the Rational suite to go along side our agile transformation services (leveraging SAFe™ and our bluejazz™ solution) puts us in a very good position to help enterprise organizations with not only successfully scaling and adopting agile – but in implementing a dependable tool solution as well. The Rational suite of tools seamlessly supports each stage in ALM, from Rational Requirements Composer and Rational Focal Point, to Rational Team Concert and Rational Quality Manager to Rational Insight. Additionally, IBM’s Urbancode™ and Pure™ strengthen the DevOps strategy and automation process. So, people, process and technology. Yet another… click.
Suffice it to say, that I am very pleased with our choice to attend and sponsor Agile Alliance’s Agile conference again this year. Not only do I feel that we made an impact and provided value, I felt like we also acquired more knowledge and pertinent information that will help us to better help others.
You know what I mean when I say that it just…clicked?
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