"They" say agile isn't for hardware. Perhaps so. But one of my agile project management students made this comment about agile in the IT infrastructure domain. He says he wants to:
...... incorporate a hybrid (traditional/agile) methodology in the IT infrastructure (servers, networks, etc) side of the business because I believe it is a huge competitive advantage in the managed services industry to show value earlier than traditional PM can do.
He goes on with this bit:
I have been finding that by incorporating the iterative, phased approach from agile allows each phase to use the traditional externally dependant waterfall method.
It shortens the original planning phase, since it is now distributed accross phases, reduces errors in estimating because each phase is estimate individually, handles change better, and delivers a better end result.
Could an agilist say it better? Of course this is not science; it's just one person's opinion with little benchmarking behind it. Nevertheless, it's instructive that agile ideas are not just about software where it's relatively easier to change things, and thus things get changed. In the more physical world of hardware, there is a place for agile ideas.
