When your agile processes have the agility - you are on overdrive !

Agile literally means "marked by ready ability to move with quick easy grace"

In typical agile product development , Five people sitting in a round table next to each other, a solution designer, a developer, a testing expert and an application manager - 1 2 3 4 huh, who is the other guy ?! Oh ya the scrum master. They are not just "agile" - they just don't meet once in a day but they are "super agile" because they always sit together. People of different genres - domain experts, solution designers, testers and developers working together to develop a quality product rapidly with live feedback from the stake holders of the product is agile. - Agreed ! This is easily said than practiced.

To practice this, all the players need clear interface with the process and the product under development.

The application manager, would want to look at the product - look and feel, product development progress information(The toughest parameter to derive when agile), product stability information from the testers, listen to developer concerns, turn around time of a feedback. The solution designer, would want to confirm the adherence of the design and implementation standards, act as a broker between developer and the application stake holder, control the development of the product so that the product does not overrun the road map of the product, keeping watch on the non functional requirements of the product is not affected in the name of rapidness. Testing expert, would want to track the information from initial requirement to the latest feedback from the application owners. After all, the latest version of the requirement serves the test case creation. Is it out of style to create test cases, because we are agile ? ;). Hope it is not a sin to jot down a few test cases in agile. The ideal tester paradise would be not to do regression on every iteration !! Hence a testing automation. Developer, would want a clearer feedback from the tester and application owner, rather than a statement that says "I need an elephant". Developer should be enabled with a shorter build cycles and cohesive module requirements in a single iteration. Developer needs to stay on top of all solution designer decisions. Summing up all the needs into Infrastructure,

1. An automated build system, that builds and deploys the latest possible version of the product in development and system environment at short intervals(Twice a day is ideal).DIRECT USER: Developer, Testing expert.
   

2. A requirements management tool, that is capable of maintaining versions and tracking of granular changes and feedback. The management tool should be hooked up with the build system. This is a hook that intimates the tester and application owner on the fulfillment of the requirement after the developer flags off a requirement.DIRECT USER:The application manager, testing expert.
   

3. A tool that runs design adherence tests on every build. DIRECT USER:Developer, Solution designer.
   

Point is, To bring in agility into the team, the team has to be powered by the right infrastructure to push and pull information from into the development process and the work product as such ! Pull over at ThinqQ and we will get you in Overdrive !!