IBM promotes agile development

InfoWorld - IBM again touted agile software development methods on Tuesday at the Software Development Conference & Expo West 2008 in Santa Clara, Calif., with an official saying the company itself probably has one of the world's largest adoptions of agile methods.

In a keynote presentation and in correspondence afterward, Per Kroll, chief architect for IBM Rational expertise development and Innovation, cited the company's proliferation of agile practices among some of its approximately 35,000 developers.

"I think in general we have 1,000-plus people [using] agile in the IBM community," with an additional 2,000 trained in agile practices, Kroll said. He said, though, that he did not anticipate that all 35,000 IBM software developers would adopt the methodology.

On Monday at the conference, Scott Ambler, practice leader for agile development at IBM, spoke on the state of the agile space. Agile development focuses on developing software in iterations of usually two weeks. This allows for more flexibility than the traditional waterfall methodologies.

"Agile is taking many things that we've been using for a lot of years before agile was around [and] adding a lot of new things and putting a very good spin on it and making development more human," said Kroll. Concepts such as iterative development and continuous integration are not new, but agile accounts for factors like human and collaborative aspects, he said. "We firmly believe, and our executives firmly believe, that the most successful organizations of tomorrow will be the ones [able] to adopt agile principles," Kroll said.

IBM has roughly 150 agile projects, he said. But each team needs to determine its own agile use based on the context. Agile means a lot of things to different teams, he said.

A key factor is that IBM helps customers and its own teams with applying agile development to complex environments, facing issues such as scalability and compliance, said Kroll.

Rolling out agile principles could be done with a carrot-and-stick approach. "It's pretty obvious that the whip approach only works for a while," with developers reverting back when no one is watching any longer, he said. To encourage agile practices, IBM has recognized teams for what they have accomplished.

IBM leverages its Agile Evaluation Framework in promoting the practices. "This helps us get some assistance to teams in their quest to become more agile," Kroll said. The framework is a tool to help teams understand how well they have adopted various practices and drives discussions on how to further improve.

The framework is one of several tools being used in a broader framework for organizational transformation, referred to as "Measured Capability Improvement." Also featured in Measured Capability Improvement is the mapping of business problems to practices being adopted. IBM is also measuring whether expected business benefits were achieved. Kroll said that IBM is looking at bringing this set of techniques and tools to market.