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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.
IBM ... agile??? That sounds like an oxymoron.
I always worry when the "century old colossus" is trying to act like a startup. Because it usually ends badly, because management and the bean counters have their own inertia, and are sure as heck not going to give up their control over stuff, or stop going by the 5,000 page manual of procedures.
I've known people who used to work at IBM ... and most of them still owned the starched white shirts.
They have anything resembling "agile" surgically removed when they're hired.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
There is no such thing as "agile development". It is not a process or design pattern and it is not useful. It is a collection of marketing terms embraced by people who don't want to follow a design pattern. It is a formal excuse for poor design and an attempt to spin poor design practices into something which appears "modern" and "forward-thinking" on the surface.
If IBM really does this, it will LOOK like progress for a year or two, and afterwords everything will start to fall apart and it will be very expensive to fix, and require actual formal design. Happens pretty much every single time, unless they simply accept failure and move on.