Agile: An Executive Guide gives you the bottom-line information that you need to harness the business benefits of Agile within your organisation.
Use Agile methods to turn your IT challenges into high-value returns
All too often, IT solutions are plagued by budget overruns, missed deadlines, low-quality outputs and dissatisfied users. Agile methods are proven, common-sense approaches for substantially increasing the relevance, quality, flexibility and bottom-line business value of your software solutions.
Agile methodologies such as Scrum, DSDM, FDD, Lean, XP and Kanban, are proven approaches for applying the finite resources of an organisation to deliver high business-value software solutions on time and within allocated budgets.
These methodologies protect organisations from wasting their IT budgets by replacing large upfront financial commitments with incremental investment based on the ongoing business value of the delivered software. They encourage ongoing collaboration with key stakeholders, empower staff to regularly deliver fully functional and fully tested capabilities, and ensure that the IT solutions delivered are responsive to ongoing organisational and market changes.
At the heart of Agile methods are ten core business benefits that enable organisations to maximise 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 and identifies which of the most popular Agile methods do (and do not) deliver these benefits.
Agile: An Executive Guide provides you with tools to assess your organisational culture, structure and dynamic in order to determine whether Agile methods are suitable to your specific needs, and to select those Agile methods that are the best fit for your organisation and your projects.
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 organisation, avoid common traps, monitor and measure your investment, and broaden the use of Agile methods into other areas of your organisation. It includes step-by-step guidelines, interactive tools and targeted questionnaires to help you and your staff successfully implement these methods.
Agile: An Executive Guide describes Agile methods in clear business language specifically written for professionals. It will help you make realistic business-driven decisions on whether Agile methods are appropriate for your organisation; whether you are looking to reduce your IT overheads, provide better software solutions to your clients, or have more control over your IT expenditures. This guide provides practical, proven ways to introduce, incorporate and leverage Agile methods to maximise your business returns.
Agile methods have been helping organisations turn their IT overheads into high-value returns for over 20 years. Buy this pocket guide today and turn your IT budgets into real, measurable, high-value results for your organisation.
Jamie Lynn Cooke has 25 years of experience as a senior business analyst, project manager and solutions consultant, working with over 130 public and private sector organisations throughout Australia, Canada and the United States.
Jamie has been working hands-on with Agile methods 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 methods to numerous organisations worldwide.
She is also 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.