Businesses reliance on IT has brought IT into the centre of business strategies and boardroom debates. With all eyes on IT to deliver business results, IT executives are asking how to:

• Extract the maximum business value and return from our projects?
• Improve IT governance at the programme office level?
• Retain and incentivise key staff?
• Better manage project costs?
• Reduce overall project risk?
• Improve cycle times and get to market faster?

How can IT help us achieve our business goals?

Agile is about:

• Realising business results
• Gaining competitive advantage
• Obtaining real value from projects

To achieve this, it requires more than simply implementing Agile practices into your organisation. It takes a shift in thinking about IT, projects and our overall business.

Programme Level – Quickly Identify Projects that will Maximise Business Value

Goal: Find ways to bring project profit forward, and realise early if a project is destined for failure in order to save project costs and reduce overall risk.

Short, Fast, Incremental

Looking at the stable of projects in the pipeline we need to quickly identify which projects will deliver the maximum business results - and get to them first. We also need to uncover those projects that are failing – or will fail - and get rid of them fast.

Traditionally, we need to wait until the end of the project to move on to the next project with Agile:

• Deliver 80% of the value with 20% of the effort
• Delivery of working projects early and often
• Delivery of projects over increments or iterations – evolving over time

We can quickly move to the next project – and drop projects as necessary – based on real business value delivered.

Project Level – Reduce Project Risk and Bring Project Profit Forward

Goal: Reduce time lag between project start and maximising profit – bring project profit forward.

Reduce Waste, MMFS and Frequent Delivery

Traditionally, project breakeven (cost v. time) does not hit until well into a project’s lifecycle. Why? Projects cannot be deployed until the very end.

Agile delivers working software with real business functionality often. This means that business value and benefits are delivered earlier – allowing us to achieve project profit faster over the lifecycle of the project. How is this possible?

• Focus on minimum market feature set – Take the minimum set of features that the product requires to reach a first sale or use. Deliver this first – then deliver in increments after this to allow for continued sales.
• Reduce waste – if 20% of the functionality will deliver 80% of the value required – deliver that first, get feedback, revise and deliver again.

This way of thinking reduces overall financial risk of projects.

Exoftware teams advise, coach and lead companies to their business goals.

We have counseled and coached many companies in using Agile to implement their business strategies. We work to address questions such as:

• Distributed Teams and Agile
• Agile and Offshoring
• Off site Customers and Requirements
• New Product Development and Agile
• Agile and Legacy Code
• Management and Agile Visibility
• Agile and Programme Management
• Agile in the Boardroom

For more on Exoftware’s Approach click here

Contact us to find out how we can help you