Becoming Agile

Foreword

Over the years I have seen a lot of software development organizations try to become agile. Some have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams and continue to improve to this day. But those are the exceptions. In a more typical scenario, agile development shows some initial success, but once the low-hanging fruit has been picked, it doesn't seem to deliver that much sustained value over time. The question is, why does sustained success from agile development seem to be so elusive?

I observe three reasons why agile initiatives seem to plateau:

First, agile development is frequently initiated as a grassroots movement to develop better software—it is seen as a "developer thing." Consequently, development managers and customer organizations are ...