Makati, Philippines – “Those of you who are frustrated with your software projects, you are not alone. You are commiserating along with 84% of the rest of the IT population,” said CEO Calen Legaspi at the recent Computerworld Philippines Executive Briefing held at Tower One in Makati City.
With the theme "Business Agility: Innovations to Help the Business Soar in 2013," the seminar aimed to help businesses make decisions on what technologies or solutions to implement to bolster their competitiveness and to capture highly critical consumers. Aside from Legaspi, the speaker line-up included CEOs Stephen Cutler of FSC Holdings and Dustin Andaya of Island Rose.
Orange and Bronze Software Labs, the software development firm Legaspi heads and co-founded, is an advocate of Agile software development – a modern method that is touted as a more efficient way of developing software.
Legaspi explained that the reasons for challenged and canceled IT project include “lack of user involvement, incomplete requirements, unrealistic time frames, and lack of executive support. In many companies, the people working on these projects are rarely dedicated resources, a lot of them still report to different groups. For example, the business analysts report to the business analyst head, the architect reports to the architecture group, the software developers report to the programming department. They work in different floors so every little problem takes forever to resolve because they only communicate by email. With Agile, the values and attitude of people involved are just as important as processes. It also relies heavily on automation for quick feedback. Here you get clear business objectives – how much money should be saved, how many customers we want to have, how much faster should our process be?”
Compared to the traditional way of software development, Agile is an iterative approach preferred by an increasing number of companies worldwide because it delivers software capabilities incrementally, lowers risks, and expedites time-to-market. It encourages open communications across the team, making software development collaborative, dynamic and interactive.
However, Legaspi issued a fair warning on practicing the Agile method. “Agile is not a silver bullet. Many organizations have adopted Agile practices with poor results. To improve the success rate, we have to recognize that each company is different. Change not just practice, but also the culture and performance measures – align towards collaboration, avoid a matrix organization, and all stakeholders have to be deeply involved to bring out business results. It might work for some, and not for others, but having experienced, pragmatic Agile coaches to guide you through the process will help.”
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About Orange & Bronze:
Orange and Bronze Software Labs is a Filipino-owned software development company delivering well-engineered, relevant software services and products to customers in the Philippines and overseas. O&B is the first Philippine-based SpringSource [by vmWare] partner, with over one hundred seasoned software engineers specializing in Spring, Grails, Spring Roo and Hibernate.
Media Contact:
Kathleen Fonacier-Garcia
Marketing & Communications Officer, Orange & Bronze Software Labs
894.3415 / 751.03.03 | kat.garcia@orangeandbronze.com
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