In Global Delivery Engagements:

Assessing Fit for Agile Development

Madu Ratnayake, Global Head of Process Quality, and Valarmathy Rangasamy, Lead Agile Champion, Virtusa Corporation

Agile software development is receiving increasing attention from information technology (IT) organizations globally. With its emphasis on lightweight processes, high-quality deliverables, flexibility in dealing with changing business priorities, short delivery cycles, higher team morale, and a host of other benefits, agile development offers a fresh approach to businesses seeking greater agility in their software engineering processes.

While agile development aims to increase collaboration and communication, Virtusa' experience indicates that it is no silver bullet for the ills of enterprise application development. Agile practices deliver significant advantages when applied in the right context, at the same time they also contribute to notable failures when implemented in the wrong context.

So, identifying the right conditions for agile development is perhaps the critical success factor in its use. This article describes Virtusa's Agile Suitability Assessment tool for deciding whether a project using the global delivery model is suitable for agile development.

Is Agile Development suitable for your project?

The Agile Suitability Assessment tool is a systematic approach to understanding the "ground" conditions of a project, and for deciding whether agile development is the right approach to use.

The tool assesses the risk associated with specific problems on the ground, and identifies ways to tailor agile processes to address them. But, if the ground conditions are unfavourable, the use of agile practices can harm both the players and the chances for a successful project. You cannot play ice hockey with bumpy ice!

Determining Agile Suitability for Outsourced Global Delivery

Systematically assessing the suitability of agile practices for a particular engagement is an art in itself.

Several of the publicly available suitability assessment tools are primarily based on the assumption that traditional approaches and agile approaches sit on opposite ends of a continuum. On the basis of multiple environmental factors, these tools try to pinpoint the exact location in which the target project falls on this continuum.

In fact, Virtusa's experience in global agile delivery suggests that agile and traditional approaches are not the two ends of a continuum.

Our Agile Suitability Assessment approach is based on a risk-benefit analysis framework that considers the complex nature of the environments in which the projects are executed. We evaluate numerous environmental parameters, including client readiness, team readiness, the commercial relationship, the nature of the target solution, and a host of other aspects before recommending agile development for an engagement.

The Five Factors driving Agile Suitability

The Virtusa Agile Suitability Assessment tool guides the evaluation of a project's environment along five key dimensions that affect the success of agile development in an outsourced global delivery engagement.

Client Environment

Applying agile practices to an environment steeped in traditional development methodologies requires a significant shift in mindset. Proper understanding of what agile development means, willingness to change, and executive sponsorship are important for the transformation to happen.

If the client organization is open to undertake risks, is innovation-driven and has a mindset for continuous improvement, then the required change can be easily accomplished.

A strong agile champion at the top is critical for the success of an agile development project.

One of the key benefits of the agile approach is its ability to deliver a solution iteratively to the end users, enabling them to start realizing benefits early on.

A tightly time-driven project creates the right environment for all stakeholders to come together quickly, build working relationships and create momentum. Other dimensions, such as the number of client stakeholders, the existing level of trust between users and IT, and the overall collaboration culture, can significantly affect the outcome.

Client Partnerships

In a multi-site, multi-partner project, the quality of relationships among partners plays a significant role.

The openness of partners to sharing the feedback for the benefit of the project, the availability of the partners to participate in multiple sessions, and the overall level of trust play key roles.

The client and the partners must share realistic expectations and be willing to listen and empower each other toward project success.

Nature of requirements and solution

The essence of the agile approach is to develop software iteratively and deliver in usable increments that provide value to the business. The nature of the requirements, as well as the solution to meet them, plays a key role in executing the project using agile methods.

The refactoring effort involved for incremental development may not be justifiable when the requirements are frozen upfront. The feasibility of segmenting the requirements and developing them in smaller chunks, the frequency of requirement changes, the business's ability to quickly prioritize requirements, and the criticality of the application are all important factors in analyzing the suitability for an agile approach.

Client Engagement

When the project has a fixed timeframe, the agile approach is particularly useful for getting maximum business benefit within the given time.

On the other hand, projects with both fixed timeframe and scope may not provide enough flexibility for the business to reprioritize or change requirements once the project commences.

Agile development is best suited for projects with fixed time and cost, and variable scope.

Team

Agile development favours individuals and interactions over processes and tools. The approach is more people-centric; hence, team composition plays an especially important role in assessing agile suitability. It is crucial to have team and management buy-in, since the agile approach is primarily driven by mindset over practices.

The availability of the right skills and the team's collaborative abilities play a significant role in the success of the project. Also, since agile is dependent on a high degree of tacit knowledge, it is vital to maintain a stable team.

Dynamically changing teams should opt for a more traditional development approach instead of a people-oriented approach.

Agile Suitability Analysis

By carefully assessing the five factors described above, we are able to depict a project's suitability for agile development in a structured way.

The diagrams for the two extreme scenarios are shown in Diagram 1.

In the diagram to the left, the benefits outweigh the risks, and hence this project is most suitable for an agile approach.

In the diagram to the right, the risks outweigh the benefits, and hence this project may not be suitable for agile development.Diagram 2 shows two typical real-world examples:

Project one is a technical application rewrite project that has minimal involvement from business users. The team is not stable and does not have the required skills for test automation. The application is dependent on the number of related applications, and hence requirements cannot be segmented into logical chunks.

All these points introduce major risks for an agile approach, which is therefore not recommended for this project.

In Project two, most of the environmental factors are conducive for agile development; the team-related risk is based on a requirement for skills in a proprietary test tool environment. This project is conducive to an agile approach, and risk mitigation steps can be taken by training the team on the proprietary test automation tool. In each case, the final decision is taken after a detailed analysis of the suitability report by an expert agile champion along with the project stakeholders.

Virtusa's Agile Implementation Approach

We follow a structured approach to agile implementation in projects using our "Conceive - Transform - Optimize" model. The following chart depicts our six-step methodology for agile implementation, including how Agile Suitability Assessment fits into the approach as shown in Diagram 3.

We help our clients conceive the best use of agile concepts by:

* Conducting awareness sessions on agile development

* Assessing the suitability of the project

We help the teams transform their development processes into agile ones by:

* Conducting detailed agile development workshops

* Tailoring the project approach based on the team's inputs and risks assessed during the suitability assessment

During project execution, we optimize the agile approach by:

* Providing continuous coaching, since practising agile techniques requires a major change in team member mindset

* Continuously evaluating and refining the approach based on project performance and feedback from the team and client

Summary

Agile software development is not a panacea for all challenges related to today's complex software development environment. Those who are considering agile practices should apply a structured suitability assessment approach to determine the organization's readiness to execute an agile development project. While agile practices deliver significant advantages in the right context, they contribute to project failures when applied in an inappropriate context.

The success of the agile approach depends primarily on having the right supporting mindset, and secondarily on the proper execution of agile methods. By using Virtusa's Agile Suitability Assessment tool, an organization can quickly understand whether it has the right stuff for success.