What Does the New Year Hold for Agile Development?

This week we continue our look ahead at what’s to come in the world of business and company development next year. Having already covered the sales and recruiting trends to watch for in 2012, the time has come to shift our attention to agile development – and as you’ll see below, it won’t be all about software.

What are your predictions for agile development in 2012?

Jeff Sutherland , Scrum Inc. and OpenView Senior Advisor

During 2012, I expect more managers to get their hands dirty in forging an agile culture in their corporations. This radical management, as described by Stephen Denning, is critical for companies to embrace a business model focused on customer feedback and meet the intellectual needs of an evolving workforce. To date, a 19th century corporate structure has been the biggest hurdle to realizing the full potential of Scrum. To maintain a competitive edge, companies will have to embrace Scrum teams and agile thinking for the whole enterprise.

Another trend for 2012 will be the surge of interest in Scrum beyond software and IT. Without partnerships between various functions and departments, corporations cannot take full advantage of aligning direction with cross-functional teams. Already I’m seeing sales teams drastically increase revenue with Scrum, venture capitalists using Scrum to ensure the best ROI, and management teams realizing the value of agile practices in strategy.

(More from Jeff: Why Story Points Are Better Than Hours in Scrum)

Kelly Waters, All About Agile

I think 2012 will see a potential backlash against agile, as more large companies try it and fail.  I think this will create more skepticism about agile success stories and cause agile enthusiasts to try to back away from the term “agile” and instead talk about it in different terms.  I can see signs of this already and I believe it will be magnified next year.

Having said that, I also think the challenges that most businesses face today − such as the rapid pace of change, economic uncertainty, consumerization of IT − mean that more and more business will need to act decisively to transform their cultures and practices.  They will need to make their companies faster to market, more innovative, more adaptive, and more responsive to customer needs.  This even greater need for business agility and competitive advantage will continue to drive agile methods into the mainstream, moving further into large corporate and government, as well as the more natural places like media and technology companies.

Concepts like Continuous Delivery, Adaptive Leadership, Lean Startup and Beyond Budgeting will begin to elevate agile methods to the next level, where agile is a means to an end, and the real goal is to accelerate the creation of business value.

Boris Gloger, BorisGloger.com

Just as Scrum relentlessly unveils the dysfunctionalities of an organization, we will see a shift in discussions in 2012. Until now it has all been about the implementation of Scrum − about the process, aspects of teaming, and so on. But as everyone knows by now how the framework itself works, teams will reach the invisible frontiers within their organizations. Questions about leadership, (self) management and product management in particular will arise.

The promise of faster time-to-market can only be kept if product management adopts the agile mindset and product owners really begin to understand their role and importance as visionaries. It will become clearer that self organization is not “just for fun,” but that it requires skills and knowledge. Dysfunctional working processes will be more visible than ever before.

From my point of view, we will see a litmus test in 2012. Will the responsibles understand that identifying dysfunctionalities in an organization is the very chance to improve and innovate, to become faster, to keep and attract the best employees? Certainly some companies will try to bypass the challenges with some kind of pseudo-Scrum. But it will be those companies that allow change to spread throughout the organization and foster it that will win the races of globalization.

For more on Scrum and agile practices, check out our Managing Product Development topic page.