Being Agile with Agile – A start-up need.
As most of the software projects seek better success rates (Do you know the success percentage in waterfall world?), faster time to market and manage unpredictability with long term finances of project, the advent towards agile methodology has seen a huge hike.
Now let’s juxtapose this with current IT environment, where the biggest brands are facing challenges with talent retention and acquisition, even with paying the kind of hikes and new offers they had never done.
The path is clear for rest, be agile with agile implementation.
As we look at what is needed to step into agile world, the need of the hour is to look from other side of the glass. We need to deliver successful projects, with rapid time to market and build capability to manage change with ever changing needs in this dynamic world.
The model needs to evolve, and it has evolved successfully for us, we are doing fairly well with reaching the end goals, ensuring we reap benefits of agile with junior resources.
Yes, we indeed are walking a path of success, for our customer, the new talent we are building and equally beneficial for our balance sheet and fattening pockets of every happy employee.
So how did we make it happen? It starts from the right building block, we have our strategy in recruiting talented freshers. Followed by their carefully structured training program.
Does it sound usual? It may, but execution is way different. Tailored & targeted plans are executed for a small group, mentored by our technical leaders, inducting them right into the projects.
That brings us to our second pillar, a strong technical leadership, directly leading the junior workforce does marvels for us. Using techniques like paired programming sessions, frequent design discussions and daily scheduled review and guidance, have resulted in controlled rework with quality output.
“Let’s get the agile implemented, all we need is a self-organizing, cross functional team of developers and we are rolling.”
So now it’s about binding everything together, bringing us to the final pin in our success, having strong leadership for executing the projects. Note we are talking leaders and not managers, carefully nurturing the talent, bringing the team together, channelizing their ‘individual strengths and skills’.
We are agile in forming a team, training, solutioning, adapting change, sharing workload, promoting diverse skills, and delivering common success.
