Thursday, January 12, 2006
Agile IT
To keep it short and sweet, I had a meeting today with XYZ guy from XYZ company. NextLogic & XYZ company are thinking of becoming partners in the future. We do similar things, we develop complimentary solutions and target complimentary customers. The conversation went great, I was happy that XYZ company has similar interests and we found many synergies. I decided to do the last check, which I do with every possible future partner (not that we are so big to be that selective, but we are ....selective). The most important part is to identify how the future partner really thinks and feels by identifying their vision, mission, why they do business and how they do business. I just wanted to know if we are aligned.
I asked an innocent question: “So how long does it take you to develop and implement a simple web based portal for smaller company. I suppose a month???”
The response: “Well, one month is usually just paper work and identifying the needs.”
Dasha: “Hmm, OK..and are those small guys willing to pay for additional “paperwork” if they are buying a software solution to actually get rid of it?”
XYZ: “If they are not willing, we find someone else who is willing and can afford.”
Well, I am not here to judge, but I felt like I have to tell him about GREAT agile software development approach.
Dasha:
“See, XYZ, we usually agile it a bit. We meet a customer for initial meeting – 2-3 hours where we define simple vision for the project and few milestones. Then we get down to the actual work and define what needs to be done immediately in one week. We usually come up with one main function to be implemented and developed in first week itself.
We go back, develop that “piece from a cake” and meet customer again (once a week for smaller projects) together we test it, collect feedback, change it, implement it and move on to the second feature. While developing second feature, customer already uses the first one and provides additional feedback and changes requirements.
Its simple, its interactive, we don't waste our time and money and most importantly, we don't waste resources of our customers. At the end no special training or implementation is required as customer already knows the solution very well.”
XYZ: “Interesting....”
Agile software development approach might not be for everyone, but it works well for NextLogic. Software development is thanks to it more interesting and fun and we are not just building more quality solutions, but we are building loyal customers and even making some friends. Great rewards for us...and thank you to people who thought us agile software development principles .... read more at http://agilemanifesto.org/
