"Agile" as an enterprise strategy

(First of three parts)

Last week we covered Jason Fried and David Hansson’s published work Rework.” The book endeared me so much for its insight in spite of its casualness and irreverent prose. Unlike, most business books, it encourages you to leave your sacred cows in the barn and defy the status quo which, according to the book, have caused so many businesses to fail. As I reread the pages, I also discovered that beneath the layers of its brutal candor, the core principles for which many of its ideas emanate is largely borrowed from what is called in the world of technology the “Agile Development.” Agile Development or popularly “Agile Methodology” is a software lifecycle process whereby a project usually, a software, is being developed “without a concrete plan” – that’s what it is. 

The Agile process was introduced only recently and has gained notoriety among I.T. conservatives, the academe included, for its very informal approach to developing software. The convention was or is based on the Waterfall Model where a piece of software must be written according to a prescribed plan.      

While the model has worked for many years, it is also a problem. For the proponents of Agile, they debunk it as an inflexible process – incapable of addressing changes in customer requirements. 

The traditionalists, on the other hand, discredit Agile for its lack of documentation and direction. To them, they key to building good software is when coders are guided by a plan and to execute the same without question or pause. So to speak, the Waterfall Model can be likened to a construction project where everyone in the team has a blueprint of the building’s floor plans from ground up.

Conversely, Agile developers believe that such model is only good in materials construction but not software. Software is built on codes not concrete or steel bars and therefore it is a bad comparison.   

Like the Bible, software methodology is also a highly debated subjected in technology. But as it is now, Agile is winning the battle so far. More and more tech firms have embraced Agile for its flexibility. Yahoo! Google and 37Signals for instance are among the popular high-tech brands that have openly advocated the model. The Open Source community, too, has also used Agile to collaborate with other developers to build license-free software. In the Philippines, I know only a few IT companies that have adopted Agile for a development method.    

While Agile is largely understood as a method, it is also a business principle in itself. It was, in fact, on this same Agile principle that transformed a home-based software company to an Internet giant like Basecamp. But what exactly is Agile? Can Agile be also applied to non-technology companies? 

Agile is a process designed to adapt to changing requirements. Many high-tech companies use Agile because of the nature of the industry – fast-changing and competitive. While the current model (Waterfall) provides a high degree of predictability in terms of outcome, which is actually good for business, the downside is that developers and customers are stuck to the plan that when a good idea comes up, you can’t integrate that good idea to the software lest you ruin the whole plan. Agile operates on the idea that any good idea is welcome anytime in the project.

Customers and developers only need to agree when and where to put that good idea in. Agile in other words, can accommodate improvisations within the project period not after the project is done. 

It is adaptability that makes a product or service standout not how good you have worked on your business plan. Thus, of what good is a plan when if it cannot stand up to the challenge of change and the opportunities along the way?  (To be continued)  

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Just created a “Taga Cebu” fan page in Facebook (www.facebook.com/tagacebu) and I’m very happy that it has been warmly received by Cebuanos from all over in less than three months. The fan page is not only exclusive to Cebuanos but for people who enjoy the Visayan-speaking culture. The content in that page are contributions from myself and the fans ranging from humor, heritage pictures, Filipino food, political views and a lot more. You may want to check the site and get to know the other “bisaya” from the different parts of the world.

And I would like to take this opportunity to greet some of them, Donn and Ritche Awit, Sean Salera, Al Retardo, Annabee Lalim, Rico Gloria, Tonton Leuterio, Mrs. Wil, Shannen Hijara Hijar, Erick Bitz, Roldan Campaña Aldueso, Mary Joy Arcadio, Erwin Lamongo, Chai Latte H, Amazona Enomar and many, many others. Thank you guys for making the page highly interactive.  

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