As with most things, complacency is a killer, says Stephen de Villiers Graaff, principal agile consultant at DVT. "I see many parallels between mountain climbing and agile adoption. The keys to success in both are bravery, preparation, dedication, passion and resolve. Without these, you are guaranteed failure."
De Villiers Graaff will present at ITWeb Software Development Management 2015, scheduled to take place on 24 March in Johannesburg. His presentation: "Agility is a journey, not a destination" will provide key focus points for the successful transformation of agility.
De Villiers Graaff stresses the importance of looking at agility as a journey: "Anyone who has summited a mountain will know that getting there is only part of the journey; you still need to make it down, and preferably alive. It's the same with an agile adoption; once you've arrived, you realise that the real work starts. Now you need to ensure all that hard work continues to bear that valuable fruit you've fought so hard to cultivate. Agility and learning are synonymous and continuous. If you're not building on what you've got, you're going backwards."
During his presentation, De Villiers Graaff will look at the common pitfalls related to agility. "Every organisation has its own personality, and its own unique ebb and flow. But there are universal killers: complacency, lack of preparation, lack of knowledge and lack of leadership, among others. While the resolution to these pitfalls may be handled very differently given the team or organisation, it is valuable to be aware and put counter-measures in place. After all, as with most things, prevention is better, and far cheaper, than cure," he says.
"Agility is far beyond methodologies and frameworks. It is a philosophy that transcends software development. I purposely chose Edmund Hillary's historic climb of Everest as a metaphor. Both the conquering of a mountain and the successful transformation of an organisation will follow no set path because there is no path. Every step upwards will present new challenges, some of which will be a surprise. Only a few make it to the very top, and none of them get there by accident."
Joining De Villiers Graaff at the event is Roger Loe, principal consultant at SAP South Africa. Loe will present on SAP HANA - simplifying software development.
"Many people see SAP as simply an ERP application provider," says Loe. "That was then - today SAP's product offering is much broader and SAP is a recognised pioneer in in-memory technology. This is such a game-changer that even SAP's competitors (which initially dismissed the idea) are now trying to catch up with their own versions. SAP HANA is not just an in-memory database - it's far more than this."
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