Agile software development projects on time, on budget

Brendon: Is it possible to deliver Agile software development projects on time and on budget? I posed this question to Pete Tansey, Senior Equinox Consultant, and Agile Coach for the Tertiary Education Commission's (TEC) IT programme of work.

Pete: Yes definitely, by time boxing and effectively managing the scope. 

Contrary to popular myth Agile development is ideally suited to business projects where the time is fixed and the cost is capped. This is a typical situation for the TEC. The organisation has undergone major reforms in the last three years as a result of significant changes in government tertiary policy. IT has worked closely with the business to understand the new processes and deliver effective IT systems. We have to provide the Minister and the Tertiary Sector with certainty as to when the new systems will be delivered as well as making sure taxpayers' money is spent effectively within the agreed budget. Whenever it is practical we use an agile development approach to deliver this certainty.

Brendon: So how does Agile development effectively manage scope and still deliver on time and on budget when other approaches often struggle?

Pete: Continuous collaboration with the business. The key to delivering high value business applications, on time and on budget, is one of continuous collaboration with the business to refine the project scope. Not the business outcomes, they are fixed, rather the detailed software requirements. The business and IT collaborate using interactive agile planning techniques to identify and defer low business value requirements. By continuously collaborating with the appropriate business experts, the IT Team are able to build the essential high business value requirements first. This ensures that a worthwhile production system is always available for release on the required date.

Brendon: Normally it is hard to get the business to participate in IT projects. How does agile software development get continuous business collaboration?

Pete: By designing a process that a business expert wants to participate in, and sees value in, rather than one that is IT focused and they are forced to participate in. The process must be business driven rather than IT driven – everything needs to be described in terms of business value e.g. using story cards, not technical terms and IT tasks. This is foreign to a lot of technical IT people and IT project managers. To communicate effectively with the business we need to reflect the business value in everything we say and do. The process must also provide the business experts with early access to working software. They need to be able to concretely confirm which functionality does and does not work, rather than requiring them to critique abstract requirements and try to guess what might work. The business experts involved in our agile projects love the approach once they have been through their first time box. They discover that it is so different to a traditional project – they are in control and get real feedback on their decisions by using the software.

Brendon: So can agile development be used for all projects?

Pete: Yes, to a greater or lesser degree, as long you understand where the project sits in the "spectrum of agility". I had better clarify that – the degree of agility depends on the constraints of the project environment and the organisation's culture. The agile manifesto is a good place to start for guidance on this. "Individuals and interaction" is a core value of the manifesto and the ability to continuously collaborate with the project's business experts is a good example of the behaviour a team must adopt to be successful with an agile approach. As part of every project's business case at the TEC, we conduct an agile risk assessment to figure out where the project sits in the spectrum and how agile our implementation approach can be. This assessment is based on the values and principles in the agile manifesto.