Over the years, promoters of Agile development[1] have known that things tend to run aground with larger software projects or large organizations. Now, the drive to digital, automation and AI may be too much for even the most Agile of teams.
As Ron Jeffries[2], co-creator of the Extreme Programming (XP) methodology recently put it[3], Agile has become another cover story for relentlessly pushing developers to keep producing more and more, faster and faster. With digital, AI and automation, the scale gets even more untenable, and this is where Agile as we know it tends to fall down.
Another view, of course, is that Agile is the only way to grow a digital business. Agile, applied at scale, "appears to be a more effective way of working in a rapidly-evolving digital environment," according to an article[4] out of MIT. "Large companies like Spotify, Ericsson, Microsoft, and Riot Games have all adopted the method."
Companies that adopt agile at scale 'benefit from breaking down functional silos and pooling the talent from each function into teams," relates Carine Simon, a senior lecturer and industry liaison at MIT Sloan. "In the traditional management, you have one leader for each function ... but the coordination and collaboration between those functions is often difficult, whereas if you create one team that pools members from each, then the thinking is that the project will be more successful. All projects are going through a similar mode of management."
In a recent analysis[5] of Agile companies, Federico Berruti, Geet Chandratre, and Zaid Rab, all with McKinsey, state there are many complications when attempting to apply Agile methodologies to digital settings, from immature