Over the last year or so I have had the privilege (that’s what I keep telling myself!) of being the architect on a project within Infrastructure that has required some application development. As is the fashion it has been operated as an Agile project. I remember going out to dinner 6 months in with peers from a range of organisations who all agreed on one thing – Agile does not work with Infrastructure we must be mad!
Inevitably the project in question has been a rollercoaster particularly as I sit in both camps – watching & sharing the Developer’s frustrations whilst understanding and sharing the Infrastructure team’s objections; yet as time has gone on I have been increasingly vocal that Agile and Infrastructure can work.
How? Looking at Scrum – can anyone genuinely say it’s a bad idea to have a quick meeting each day to check people are working on things you expect & to identify blocked tasks and have someone to clear them? The barrier here is how to stop independent Techies from feeling micromanaged and boxed in…
Backlog grooming and sprint planning – spending some time on a short regular cycle to evaluate where you are against the plan, what new stuff needs to be done and what fits where? Identifying sacrifices based on what delivers most value – surely a good thing? Being flexible and responsive? Hasn’t that been on our objectives since day 1?
Definition of Done – not starting any work until there is a card for it and it has an agreed set of deliverables – why would you not want that?!
Fail fast – finding out your million pound project is a disaster in the making before you’re late and over budget – pah!
Kanban – an at a glance board to understand the pipeline of work? Terrible idea!
Clearly there are somethings you would struggle on – an outsourced contract needs all the design completed up front generally but even so you could run the tender process using tools from the Agile box as well as the implementation.
I know there are other aspects that could be used but hopefully you’re getting my drift at this point!
The project has reinforced my views that natural selection is alive and well in IT. Infrastructure teams must evolve or be left behind – Public cloud is a game changer; for me it is an opportunity to demonstrate the value that Infrastructure teams can provide freeing us from the low value tasks to deliver secure, responsive and robust infra.
In a highly competitive market the need to have a differentiator gives the voice (rightly) to the Devs and they need speed to respond. Automation, cloud (hybrid etc.) and, yes, Agile provide the tools that a good infra team can use to revolutionise delivery or, equally, consign themselves to a tortuously slow death looking after the long tail of legacy.
Please note that his post was originally posted on LinkedIn
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