The Origins of Agile
The concept of Agile Scrum was first developed by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka in a 1986 Harvard Business Review paper. The pair would then expand upon the concept in a subsequent book, The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation.
The term 'scrum' in rugby refers to part of the game where the teams link arms to form a pushing competition to try to clear space to allow the players behind them access to the ball. Takeuchi and Nonaka, however, thought it referred to the subsequent passing of the ball from player to player along a line as they ran towards their goal.
The pair saw this as the optimum way for product development to work, as the software product being produced passed from developer to developer on its path to completion and release. While the product is in the hands of a developer, just like a ball in a game of rugby, that player is able to choose a path and make decisions regarding what to do with it.
Being Agile About Agile
Agile doesn't always make sense in every context. For example:
- highly regulated industries like healthcare and finance require comprehensive approval processes that don't always allow for developer autonomy
- regular daily Scrum meetings to synchronize teams can sometimes become more of a drain on time than the approvals process Agile removes
- open-source software risk needs to be managed, so security decisions sometimes need to be made for the project overall
- when different teams are building separate parts of a larger application, each team working independently can cause issues with assembling the final product
- for Agile to work, your customers must be as on board as your team and this isn't always the case
Thankfully, Agile takes this into account. A major principle of Agile is that you must be as flexible in your approach to Agile as the Agile approach is to software development.
Indeed, the last of the twelve principles of agile development contained within the manifesto is:
"At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly."
Principles Behind The Agile Manifesto
To stress this, Agile is now often rebranded to make clear that it is a flexible methodology to be applied only where it makes sense. This is where e.g. the Scaled Agile Frameworks (SAFe) comes in.
Supporting Agile with Enterprise Architecture
The enterprise architecture team should be tasked with developing the templates for frameworks under which your teams can build their structure. Enterprise architects can then approve their choices, ensuring they aren't at odds with other teams in the business, and still allow reporting and alignment.
To do this, however, enterprise architects must have a clear overview of their organization's business capabilities, teams, and software infrastructure. They need a modern enterprise architecture management system.
LeanIX EAM for agile SAP projects
To implement agile culture and development for SAP projects, there are typically a lot of initiatives to do, like establishing an agile culture or teams around bounded contexts.
But one very import success factor for agile SAP projects is Enterprise Architecture. That starts with tasks, like:
- Documenting As-is system landscapes, interfaces, etc.
- Outlining a target architecture
- Establish design and implementation principles
and continuous during the transformation or projects till Go Live and beyond because transform never stops but will be a continuous transformation in the future.
One question, that come up in organizations quite often, how Enterprise Architecture or an EAM can help, especially for agile teams and even if there is an added value of a EAM tool? My experience is, that agile teams
- often need some time to set up environment in sprint one and two
- have difficulties to gather information of affected interfaces and processes as well as key user and business experts
- often spend a lot of time to discuss process changes and effects of new systems or services
- having a hard time with change management throughout a whole enterprise
and many more topics, that stops them from build new software and generating value.
That’s very LeanIX EAM kicks in and can help agile teams, with a self-service or together with enterprise architects, to save time and improve quality. That will at the end make IT und business more successful and be more fun.
What are your ideas around agile SAP development in projects:
- Does EAM help or not?
- Does a tool like LeanIX help or is the initial effort to high to set it up?
- Is agile development possible withSAP S/4HANA project
- Is SAP Business Technology Platform and clear core a prerequisite for successful agile implementatio
If you are interested on EAM with #LeanIX, you can find some more information her
https://www.leanix.net/en/use-cases/erp-transformation
https://www.leanix.net/en/wiki/ea/digital-transformation-with-enterprise-architecture
