Title: Enterprise-Scale Agile Software Development
Author: James Schiel
Year: 2009
Pages: 382
Enterprise-Scale Agile Software Development is the collective sum of knowledge accumulated during the full-scale transition of a 1400-person organization to agile development-considered the largest implementation of agile development and Scrum ever attempted anywhere in the world.
Enterprise-Scale Agile Software Development shows you how to improve project management practices and product quality assurance products, adopt new management methods and involve your current customers in development while inviting new ones.
Enterprise-Scale Agile Software Development also covers ISO 9001 quality development practices, which help you create consistently high-quality software in a cost-efficient manner.
As a result, I gave this book a rating of 7.5/10.
For me, a book with a note 10 is one I consider reading again every year. Among the books I rank with 10, for example, is Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Overview of Enterprise-Scale Agile Software Development
In my opinion, if you read Enterprise-Scale Agile Software Development written in 2009 now (in 2022), you will be impressed that we have been discussing the same topics for more than a decade.
Enterprise-Scale Agile Software Development, as articulated by James Schiel, represents a paradigm shift in how large organizations approach software development. Schiel emphasizes the importance of scaling Agile methodologies to suit the complex needs of enterprise-level projects.
By breaking down silos and promoting cross-functional teamwork, organizations can better adapt to changing requirements and deliver value to customers more efficiently.
Moreover, Enterprise-Scale Agile Software Development emphasizes the significance of aligning business goals with development efforts, ensuring that Agile practices are not just confined to the IT department but integrated throughout the entire enterprise.
Through his insights and methodologies, Schiel offers a roadmap for organizations seeking to harness the power of Agile at scale to drive innovation and achieve sustainable growth.
Enterprise-Scale Agile Software Development in 2009 went far beyond standardizing agile and Scrum practices. It divides the process into manageable tasks, demonstrating how to prepare for the change, plan for it, and then launch it.
My Book Highlights & Quotes
“… Agile development is about people, not a prescription. The intent of this book is to offer guidance and a tool kit…”
“… In the end, whether you decide to transition to agile development or not depends on your commitment to doing it right and your tolerance for being exposed to, dealing with, and solving organizational dysfunctions. You’ll need both commitment and tolerance in good supply to successfully complete a transition to agile development…”
“… I have seen agile development benefit organizations in a number of different ways. First and foremost, software quality is always improved by the concepts ingrained in agile development. The continuous testing of an application, rather than waiting for the testing phase of a project to see if it all works together, is one of the most effective practices that agile development provides to an organization. I have witnessed integration efforts that took months, only to be followed by projects that included continuous integration and testing that eliminated any special time during the project when the only thing happening was integration. This is also reflected in the practice of test-driven development, where the code and its associated tests are not only kept current and working but the tests are written before the code and are driven by the design, rather than being driven by the completed code…”
“… Whether the project went well or didn’t, any potential positive feedback was so far in the future that it was easy to abandon one project to go work on another that either was using the latest technology or was the beginning of the “next great product.” On the other hand, agile development, with its short iterations and sprint reviews, gave the developers that worked for me (and, truth be told, me as well) something to look forward to at the end of the sprint. Of the three possible answers we could get for any completed backlog item (“fantastic,” “great but would be better with changes,” and “not what I wanted”), two of them were at least positive and the third (“not what I wanted”) was fairly easy to protect against by simply improving the product owner’s contact with the team. Constructive feedback on a frequent basis keeps the development teams charged and engaged with the project…”
“… Similarly, customers are considered to be the subject matter experts in how a feature will be used in the finished product. Therefore, while customers don’t drive what a Scrum team works on (what a team builds is defined by the prioritization of the product backlog and how much the team is able to commit to), they can have a significant impact on how the feature actually works. In addition, those same customers can make suggestions for improvement that can be passed to the product owner and be added and prioritized on the product backlog immediately. In this way, a customer can actually suggest new possibilities and potentially see those possibilities become reality in a short space of time. Customers that feel more connected to your prioritization decisions and feel more a part of how your product is built become satisfied and committed customers…”
In conclusion, James Schiel’s Enterprise-Scale Agile Software Development framework provides a comprehensive approach for organizations to navigate the complexities of large-scale software projects.
Any organization should be able to achieve a nearly seamless transition to agile by using the methods and information presented in Enterprise-Scale Agile Software Development.
I am incredibly grateful that you have taken the time to read this post.
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