Recently announced in the UK for instance:
Monday, February 7, 2011 The United Kingdom Department for Work and Pensions recently announced it plans to employ the Agile project management framework for all future development programs, according to a recent computing.co.uk report.
The department is often required to provide end-users and partners with reliable custom software applications. According to the report, completing development on time and within the allocated budget is often challenging.
Stever Dover, delivery director for the DWP, told computing.co.uk the decision to adopt Agile project management does not indicate a belief that all of the department's previous projects were done wrong. "The old way, provided it was supported by effective collaboration, worked and did deliver, but not as efficiently," he said.
According to Dover, Agile offers the department a method of producing higher quality software in a shorter period of time. "Agile is delivering for us, and it is our intention not to use the old style of project management for new projects in the future," he stated.
Of course, agile in the enterprise, or enterprise agile, is not exactly the animal you read about on most blogs, hear about in much agile training, or read about in the many books on the subject. For real projects in a real business, there still needs to be a business case....after all, someone needs to pay for this stuff... and of course most enterprise projects are not a hand full of developers living on pizza. So, there needs to be attention to the project people network that will extend far beyond what can be supported by eye-to-eye contact, a requirements backlog system that will support requirements maintenance, and independent system test that verifies and validates.
I've written a book on this subject, drawn from my own experience, but Scott Ambler at ambysoft.com is a good source for other points of view.
