Changing Software Development: Learning to Become Agile

6.6. Conclusion

Agile software development is about making our software development more responsive: shorter development cycles, iterative development, rapid-application development and so on. Underpinning all of these ideas is the concept of improving the feedback cycle by making it both faster and clearer. In order to help our companies change, we must first change ourselves.

We need to recognize the role that IT plays in enabling and creating change for companies. Because the benefits of this change can be difficult to see before we start work, we need to adapt to changing environments and requirements.

Many IT people have adopted a mindset that resists change. This is paradoxical, given the role that IT plays in creating change elsewhere. When IT ceases to enable and support change, it quickly becomes a block to change.

We actively want to reach a position where new system development is generating new ideas for the business: creating changes and ideas for innovation. Changing requirements are a sign of success rather than of failure, because such changes show that change is happening.