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IBM CIO Thinks Agile Development Might Save Company
Nerval's Lobster writes: A new Wall Street Journal article details how IBM CIO Jeff Smith is trying to make Big Blue, which is going through some turbulent times as it attempts to transition from a hardware-dependent business to one that more fully embraces the cloud and services, operate more like a startup instead of a century-old colossus. His solution centers on having developers work in smaller teams, each of which embraces Agile methodology, as opposed to working in huge divisions on multi-year projects. In order to unite employees who might be geographically dispersed, IBM also has its groups leave open a Skype channel throughout the workday. Smith hopes, of course, that his plan will accelerate IBM's internal development, and make it more competitive against not only its tech-giant competition, but also the host of startups working in common fields such as artificial intelligence.
The only thing they have to make sure to succeed is: "Sell/push/hawk/promote agile development tools".
But, when it comes to, the buyers and users of the Agile tools and methodology, the results are mixed.
Agile proponents have managed to sell the "no true scotsman" argument convincingly, probably because the management is willing let itself believe, "All we have to do is to give a few million dollars to this latest vendor selling the latest tools, all our problems will magically disappear".
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
My senior managers recently discovered the agile process and have proceeded to school the development teams on it. They were so excited about how it will improve our company that I didn't have the heart to tell them that all the development groups have already been using it for years now.