I recently worked at an insurance company (let’s call it Freesurance) that had mandated a “glide plane” process to bring a semblance of regularity to the chaotic development practices in place. All projects were to pass through specified stages of the glide plane at specified times. Glide planes were staggered to start every month.

Employees were mandated to enter all tickets (work requests, enhancements, and bug fixes) into a requirement-tracking tool. All tickets were to track through each of the following phases.

• New: All new work requests (tickets) should be entered into the requirement-tracking tool by the business analysts or by the development teams. Tickets must be entered at least 91 days before a scheduled monthly release.
• Acknowledged: A service level agreement (SLA) mandated that the business must acknowledge tickets within 7 days of receipt of the ticket – 84 days prior to release. This 7-day period was used to triage the tickets to remove duplicates, close tickets if no action was going to be undertaken, and to prioritize the items.
• Accepted: The IS department is tasked by the business to analyze and estimate the tickets — target 63 days prior to release.
• Business Requirements: The business analysts were required to complete the business requirements 42 days prior to release.
• Committed: IS would commit to the tickets, 28 days prior to release, that it thought it could complete — create functional specifications, construct, unit test, and build within the release dates.
• IN/OUT List: Final date to decide whether tickets are going to be included in this release or not.
• Constructed: IS completes coding, unit testing, and delivering final build 14 days prior to release.
• Resolved: Business analysts complete all testing 7 days prior to release.
• Closed: Code merged into the production environment (“going live”) on implementation day; Business signs-off on the release within 5 days of implementation. more »

My time these days is spent helping clients who want to introduce an iterative methodology into their IT departments.Time after time, I have noticed that a few factors serve as good leading indicators to the eventual success of the engagement. These factors in decreasing order of importance are:

1. Executive and Senior Management support and commitment
2. Team makeup
3. Front-line staff commitment
4. Degree of change being introduced

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Richard Powell, in his book “Wabi-Sabi Simple”, discusses how the ideas of wabi-sabi can be used today to make our lives better in various way, including our work lives. Powell’s sayings on creativity are equally valid to presentation design:

“The influence of wabi sabi on creativity begins with a simple premise: Do only what is necessary to convey what is essential. In bonsai and in haiku, you prune and trim what is nonessential in an attempt to shorten the distance between the observer and the observed. You carefully eliminate elements that distract from the essential whole, elements that obstruct and obscure….Clutter, bulk, and erudition confuse perception and stifle comprehension, whereas simplicity allows clear and direct attention.”

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I recently had a chat with a coworker about the rather inconsequential improvements in companies that had adopted Agile. While instances of significant improvements in team performance are numerous, cases where an organization as a whole has made noteworthy gains (2x-5x) are rare. I don’t know of many companies that have adopted agile on a large scale, made significant gains, and have been able to successfully sustain it for longer than 2-3 years. It is not often that the executives/senior managers feel very strongly about the gains that have been made at an organizational level. more »