Agile: An Executive Guide: Real Results from IT Budgets

Use Agile methodologies to turn your IT solution challenges into high business-value returns

All too often, IT solutions are plagued by budget overruns, missed deadlines, low-quality outputs and dissatisfied users. Agile methodologies are proven, common-sense methods for substantially increasing the relevance, flexibility and bottom-line business value of your software solutions.

Quantify and measure the benefits that Agile methodologies can deliver to your organization.

Agile methodologies, such as Scrum, DSDM, FDD, Lean, XP and Kanban, are proven approaches for applying the finite resources of an organization to deliver high business-value software solutions on time and within allocated budgets. These methodologies protect organizations from wasting their IT budgets by replacing large upfront financial commitments with incremental investment based on the ongoing business value of delivered software. They encourage collaboration with key stakeholders, empower staff to regularly deliver bottom-line value, and ensure that IT solutions are responsive to ongoing organizational and market changes.

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Understand the 10 core business benefits of Agile.

At the heart of Agile methodologies are 10 core business benefits that enable organizations to maximize their IT investments, including: Better risk management, ongoing control of budget expenditure, better alignment with business requirements, and substantially higher quality IT solutions. Agile: An Executive Guide details each of these benefits from a strategic senior management perspective.

Identify which Agile methodologies align with the specific needs of your organization.

Agile: An Executive Guide provides you with tools to assess your organizational culture, structure and dynamic in order to determine whether Agile methodologies are suitable to your specific needs, and to select those Agile methodologies that are the best fit for your organization.

Get the essential information you need to implement Agile within your organization.

Agile: An Executive Guide is full of practical advice, including detailed guidelines to help you: Choose the right kick-off point for Agile within your organization; avoid common traps; monitor and measure your investment; and broaden the use of Agile methodologies into other areas of your organization. It includes step-by-step guidelines, interactive tools and targeted questionnaires to help you and your staff successfully implement these methodologies.

Agile: An Executive Guide describes Agile methodologies in clear business language specifically written for business professionals. It will help you make realistic business-driven decisions on whether Agile methodologies are appropriate for your organization; whether you are looking to consolidate your IT overheads, to provide better software solutions to your clients, or to have more control over your IT expenditures. This guide provides practical, proven ways to introduce, incorporate and leverage Agile methodologies to maximize your business returns.

About the Author

Jamie Lynn Cooke has 21 years of experience as a senior business analyst and solutions consultant, working with over 125 public and private sector organizations throughout Australia, Canada and the United States. Jamie has been working hands-on with Agile methodologies since 2003, and has researched hundreds of books and articles on Agile topics. She is a signatory to the Agile Manifesto, has attended numerous Agile seminars; and has worked with prominent consultants to promote Agile methodologies to large organizations. She is a well-regarded speaker on both business and technology topics, most recently presenting on topics such as Getting Management and Customer Support for Using Agile and When is Agile Not the Answer? at the Business Process Modelling World Conference in Brisbane, Australia and at the AgileCanberra professional forums.

Jamie is the award-winning author of Agile Productivity Unleashed: Proven approaches for achieving real productivity gains in ANY organization, which shows how organizations in every industry can use Agile and adaptive management approaches to significantly increase productivity levels and generate high business value outputs.

She is also the author of the recently released Everything you want to know about Agile: How to get Agile results in a less-than-Agile organization, which gives readers a range of strategies for aligning Agile work within the reporting, budgeting, staffing and governance constraints of their organization. It is an essential resource for IT departments that want to deliver successful Agile results, even in the most challenging environments.