In the second installment of its focus on Agile (see the first conversation here), Red Canary hosts executives from DevShop, Point Click Care, and Strangeloop Networks. This is an edited transcript of a conference call held on February 20, 2008 and moderated by Scott Valentine. An unedited audio recording of the session will be available shortly.

Participants: •Craig Fitzpatrick Founder and CEO DevShop (visit his blog) •Dave Wessinger Co-founder and CTO Point Click Care •Kent Alstad Co-founder and CTO Strangeloop Networks

Red Canary: Welcome and thanks to all for taking part in today’s discussion. Let’s dive right in. Gentlemen, how does Agile project management compare to other methods?

Craig: “In traditional methods, the metaphor used to design software was around manufacturing; you did research up front and then you spent a number of months building the thing. The Agile method assumes that requirements can and will change. There is a fundamentally different assumption on the rigidity of requirements.

I think the biggest value in the shift towards Agile philosophy is the attempt to push decision making away from trying to make predictions on the last 80 per cent of the project up front.

we found that our business started to adopt the language of Agile. We use it like a philosophy when we’re trying to approach new areas and new problems

Kent: “I’ve worked in shops that have been pretty Waterfall, the idea that you had to not only hit the release date but call it nine months earlier.

By comparison, Agile encourages faster production iterations, an emphasis on understanding over documentation, and really places a premium on interacting with the customer.

On a waterfall project, I’d always be talking about where we’d like to be and where we thought we were, because there’s always this big push to assess against some kind of definition.

With Agile, our factory is this piece of software that grows in complexity and features with each build, each day. When we talk about what it does we’re talking about right now.

In my view, that emphasis on reality rather than hopes or plans has been very helpful for us as an industry because it makes us admit to ourselves that we really didn’t know the requirements before we started.

That can be a hard point to accept but once you get over it Agile lets you interact with the team and develop the right solution, not just “what we said it would be.”

Are Agile project methods inherently better suited to client-facing solutions than they are to in-house initiatives?

Dave: “To add to where Craig and Kent were going, the value of Agile is getting something in the customer’s hands out-of-the-gate versus down-the-road.

And from the business side, there is tremendous value in getting real input from customers before you spend an inordinate amount of R&D dollars only to get six months along and realize that you missed the mark.

Really, adopting a method at all as an organization is about where you are in your growth curve. When you only have three or four customers you can be a heck of a lot more agile.

As we brought on larger customers who were expecting a more formal process and longer time frames to accept and adopt new product, it sort of forced us to more of a waterfall approach

When we first started (in 1999) it was gun slinging all the way. But that eventually had to mature based on our business model. We loved the output we were getting, but it seemed to have some negative impact on the stability of product, and as we brought on larger customers who were expecting a more formal process and longer time frames to accept and adopt new product, it sort of forced us to more of a waterfall approach.

Today, we’re doing daily builds and releases back in to the product. The business team works with our customers and we make refinements as needed. So, as we’ve grown we’ve realized that a more formal approach is necessary if you want to entertain large, public customers.”

Craig, as a vendor you’re in a unique position to observe the market for Agile. What are you seeing in terms of the types of organizations adopting Agile methods, and why?

At some point we have to recognize that communication is the biggest determining factor of success in software

Craig: “I think there’s three ways of developing software: doing it in-house, on contract for-hire, or for commercial development aimed at a specific marketplace. I usually lump for-hire and in-house together; whether the customer is internal or external is moot.

The real difference in commercial development is that you have a person like a product marketer whose job is to know the market better than they know themselves and introduce some unique things that you probably don’t have in for-hire development.

When you bring a commercial product to market, tipping your hand too soon and letting competitors see what you’re doing can be a big risk. So, in terms of Agile, I think it’s a bit riskier in the commercial development market than in the other two.”

Kent: “I don’t know. At Strangeloop we do ship commercial product and if we’re really worried about secrecy we just enter the customer into an NDA.

In the long run, we work with pretty technical people and if you skirt around the issue too long they just get frustrated with you. If you investigate Microsoft, I think you’ll see that they’ve actually gone to a Customer Technology Preview model where they ship software much earlier – with no intention of it being used in production – in order to get feedback.

So we’ve seen models where you can integrate an Agile form of development that is very effective in responding to the changing market and taking advantage of insights.

When I’ve used Agile before, it’s been very specific to the in-house and for-hire categories Craig mentioned. But in this case we’re using it quite effectively in a commercial product, so there is hope for that. But we also have a very experienced team.”

Dave: “With Waterfall, there was always a lot of finger pointing back-and-forth with development if the product went out the door and didn’t hit the mark. “Well they didn’t spec it right,” met “No, they didn’t build it right.”.

With Agile, although we have to hit the mark a lot quicker, the frustrations that we have is with developers pointing at product marketing and saying “Well they keep moving the yardstick.” So, bringing the team together and working towards the same goal is unbelievably important. Sometimes it takes a little more vision than a less experienced coder may be capable of.

Bringing the team together and working towards the same end goal is unbelievably important.

One last point getting back to different styles . . . Cowboy or Extreme methods are really valuable if you’re able to capture individuals that have both knowledge around the marketplace and technical ability.

People like that are diamonds in the rough but if you can build a team around three or four of them – I think Steve Jobs said it best – one of those is worth 10,000 other developers. There’s been one or two cases where we’ve been able to achieve that and it’s had an incredibly positive effect.”

I’d be interested to know the prevalence of Agile methods in the smaller and medium-sized space where the pace of change is extremely high—because if you’re too rigid you get to a point in the growth curve where you simply can’t manage change that quickly.

At some point we have to recognize that communication is the biggest determining factor of success in software. If we’re not focusing on valuing and teaching that, then there will be problems.

When I’m interviewing and I find someone who is a great communicator and they really get it, that’s just a huge deal. Even if they can’t code it and have to explain it someone else, it still has a tremendous amount of value.

To me that’s the heart of what’s going in Agile: openness, communication, relating to your colleagues and having a sense of team.”

Craig: “I really agree with what you’ve said Dave and I think that would shock all the developers that have worked for me over the years. Because what you’re saying is that the ability to sit down at a keyboard and code is secondary to all these other attributes”

Craig, as a project planning vendor DevShop gets to see a lot of sides to how Agile is used – in-house, client facing, hardware and software spaces – What’s your take on how Agile is being used across the marketplace and are Agile methods making it out of the tech space and into “mainstream” business?

Craig: “There’s a direct correlation between Agile and smaller companies taking on bigger companies. If you think about it, a start-up is essentially an Agile business – you wake up every morning and never know what fire you’ll have to put out or what change of plans you’ll have to make.

So many things have changed in the software biz around lower barriers to entry and the pace at which you can pump product out. All these things have now culminated to the point where the number one critical advantage you can have is to be an Agile business.

If you are you’ll be able to go toe-to-toe with the big guys and actually do some damage.”

A start-up is essentially an Agile business – you wake up every morning and never know what fire you’ll have to put out or what change of plans you’ll have to make

How much are your own companies incorporating Agile methods into other areas of your business. For example, in product marketing or organizational planning?

Kent: “We talk about being an Agile business at our board meetings, it’s really crept out of development.

When we began to describe how we wanted Strangeloop to behave in order to best react to our customers, we found that our business started to adopt the language of Agile. We use it like a philosophy when we’re trying to approach new areas and new problems; it’s very healthy because it’s just enough control.

As a small player among giants, we feel Agile is one of our key competitive advantages and we purposely let customers know that we will listen to the market and that we will change as time goes on. That has really led us to a change in our organization.”

Dave: “I’m in a bit of a different space. We compete with organizations that are a bit more mature and slower to react – I’d guess they were more Waterfall – it may take them two years to make a major change.

Well, guess what? In the long term care space things change monthly and you have to be able to react from a business perspective. So for us, Agile starts with our strategic planning.

We sit down at least monthly and see where are we. Is something missing? What do we need to re-prioritize? That kind of Agile strategic planning allows us to re-focus as an organization from the top down and we find that extremely valuable.”

Back in the 90s, we saw a real cottage industry pop-up around project management. And there’s an argument to be made that modern practises such as Six Sigma are really just extensions of old-school project management practices. The question is: does Agile have the potential to cross-over and become a business model in and of itself?

Craig “I think it’s a bit of a slippery slope to talk about the cementing of Agile process in an industry. The more it gets written about and different flavours get taught in school, the more rigid Agile can become.

I think it’s a bit of a slippery slope to talk about the cementing of Agile process in an industry. The more it gets written about and different flavours get taught in school, the more rigid Agile can become

It comes down to adapting just the right amount of Agile process versus flatly stating “This is the agile methodology that we use.” If you go too far that way, you’re not really Agile anymore because you’re not continuing to redefine yourself.”

Dave: “I have a hard time believing that Agile is going to make any splash beyond the tech world. If you look at Six Sigma, it’s been widely adopted but it’s also been a miserable failure for companies like Home Depot. (Click for Google search on ‘Six Sigma Failure Home Depot’

Agile works well for companies that are small to medium-sized and its application as a software development technique is bang-on. But I cant imagine using it as part of a manufacturing process.

A lot of interesting points raised here today. Any final thoughts on what makes Agile work, or predictions for what the future of Agile may hold?

Kent: “Agile is where it’s at is because it made sense and produced results for organizations, against almost everybody’s belief that it could. I think that where Agile will be popular and continue to evolve is where it makes sense for businesses. If you can understand how it’s agoing to work for you, you can make great progress with Agile techniques. Where you need more process, shy away from it and build the controls that are necessary. Ultimately, when Agile makes sense it gets used and that’s why we’re here talking about it today.”

Craig: “I don’t know if I have any predictions but I have hopes. Agile is a better way to get it right for your customer. I hope it starts to become combined with a focus on general user experience in the software space.

Agile lets you interact with the team and develop the right solution, not just ‘what we said it would be’.

It used to be you had delivered software when you’d ticked off all the requirements in a document. Where I hope it’s going is towards a greater empathy for people who have to use the software. I think part of that is letting them see it and touch it sooner.”

Dave: “In the beginning we had to choose between doing the right thing or doing it right. I think that’s been a common problem across all organizations. With this project methodology, you really have the opportunity to do both, and that’s critical if you want to make inroads as a small organization.

What we’re all trying to do is solve problems at a lower threshold of pain for our customers. If we can make products that serve the business lifestyle and kind of hide between the walls, then we’ve achieved our goal.

But it’s really not about the technology. The difference between when we really engage with the customer and the market and when we don’t is 1,000 per cent. With Agile, we can actually create caring for the ultimate user and achieve a human interaction that drives the passion to get it right.

In a nutshell, I think Agile has an application for many business of many different sizes and it’s just a matter of choosing what works for you.”

Thanks guys.