Agile Development and Business Goals

Holtsnider, BillBill Holtsnider is an experienced writer, educator, and software professional with more than 26 years of experience working in the computer industry. His IT expertise includes working in such diverse areas as stock portfolio management, identity management, and software development. He is the author of six books and a wide range of technical and marketing documentation.Wheeler, TomTom Wheeler has a long track record of building organizations to develop commercial software, including products for financial services and contact centers. He has built, sold and been a senior manager in a variety of different types of companies, including international conglomerates and garage-sized start ups. He first created the Six Week Solution back in the 1980's and has been fine-tuning it since.Stragand, GeorgeGeorge Stragand is a manager and software developer with over 20 years of producing and managing the delivery of commercial software on time. He has worked for companies ranging in size from startups to multinationals, creating software both for external and in-house use. He still hasn't found a problem which couldn't be solved by one more level of indirection or a suitable amount of explosives in the correct location.Gee, JoeJoseph Gee has spent the last 10 years of his career leading and coaching teams through a variety of successful projects and Agile transitions. His advocacy for software craftsmanship has equipped teams for success in small custom shops, large telecom enterprise systems, commercial shrink-wrap modeling software, and, most recently, cutting edge behavioral analytics.

Agile Development and Business Goals: The Six-Week Solution is a guide for the software development process, which can be challenging, difficult, and time-consuming. This process, called the "Agile” process, is unique, and it features several aspects that distinguish it from the classical methods of software development. The book offers readers information about the design, implementation, and management of the different methods of creating world-class software. The book discusses the various reasons that the development of software is a difficult process, and it addresses how software development sometimes fails and why it seldom aligns with business needs. It further examines the risk associated with software creation and the different ways to mitigate them. This book is relevant to software development managers responsible for creating quality software products, and managing software development teams.

• Explains how to employ automation in your development process to improve your company's profitability
• Introduces a compensation structure that incents your technical talent to deliver measurable results on a predictable basis
• Provides real-world solutions - questions to ask when hiring or which build server software to consider, for example - instead of theoretical discussions

CIOs place IT-business alignment at the top of their wish list and recognize the growing interdependency between business success and technology use, especially when it comes to internal software development. Businesses that are able to align their software creation with the financial and delivery-time needs are the businesses that will emerge from the current downturn healthy and dominant. This book serves as an introduction for both managers and project staff that need a distilled and organized learning aid for hands-on development practices. Using research statistics, the authors provide definitive evidence of the value of switching to the described agile methods. This book also shows how to extend the agile ideas and apply them to other IT and business development scenarios.

Chapter 1 Introduction: Ask Yourself These 10 Key Questions

Chapter 2 The Problem: Why Software Projects Fail

Chapter 3 The Expectations: What It Means for Software to Succeed

Chapter 4 Overview of the Six Week Solution

Chapter 5 The Solution's Critical Pieces

Chapter 6 Managing the Cost of Change

Chapter 7 Assuring Software Quality

Chapter 8 Integrating Automation into Your Development Process

Chapter 9 Other Software Development Approaches

Chapter 10 Risks with Using This Approach

Chapter 11 Transitioning to the Six Week Solution

Chapter 12 Conclusions