We recently returned from the HIMMS conference in Orlando.  While there, we spent a significant amount of time networking with CIO's, CTO's VP's of Dev and other healthcare IT leaders.

A recurring theme that we heard was, "We're implementing/starting/using Agile and we need help!"  Most of the companies we talked to are in some state of Agile adoption.

To me, this is very gratifying.  Companies are starting to realize that Agile can help their organizations be more efficient and effective at developing software.

I also think that Agile Executives is starting at the right time.  As a community, we can help the individuals leading development teams in these organizations become better at Scrum.

 

Over the years, I have experienced many different styles of software development. In the early days, most of the development was Waterfall development. In the last few years, I’ve become an advocate of Scrum.

As I talked about last month, many people have misconceptions about what Scrum really is. The reason why we do Scrum at Veracity is because of the difference it makes in the life of the team doing Scrum. Software is for people, and happy motivated people will build better software.

However, not all executives understand Scrum and how to get the information from development teams that use Scrum. I think that these executives need a support system for managing Agile teams.

Historical Software Management When Henry Ford pioneered the assembly line, I doubt he realized the impact he’d have on Management through the ages. Historically, management was about managing the process of building things. The people were just cogs in that process. Like all cogs, they were replaceable.

Unfortunately,...

Value stream mapping is a Lean tool used to identify process improvement opportunities.  This blog post includes value stream maps of a typical waterfall development process and the increase on overall efficiency that agile provides.
Value Stream Mapping of Waterfall and Agile