Connect with us

E-Business

10 Things CIOs Need to Know About Agile Development- Gartner

Published

on

gartner.jpg
Kindly share this post

Gartner Inc. has reiterated that chief information officers (CIOs) are under pressure to support fast-evolving digital business scenarios but are finding traditional project and development methods unsuitable.

According to Gartner, enterprises are increasingly turning to agile development to speed up projects and illustrate their value.

Speaking ahead of the Gartner Application Architecture, Development and Integration Summit in Sydney this month, Nathan Wilson, research director at Gartner, said that executed well, use of agile methods has the capability to transform IT-business relationships and have a major positive impact on IT value delivery.

However, the value will be delivered only if the CIO and the entire IT management team are dedicated to the culture change that is necessary for success.

“Done well, agile development can be an integral part of the portfolio of methods that the CIO uses to deal with increasing business demand for innovation,” said Mr. Wilson. “Done badly, agile development will create a lot more problems than it solves.”

Gartner has identified 10 guiding principles for agile development:

Agile Is Not One Thing

Agile development methodologies are a set of approaches to software development that share a common philosophy but are sharply distinguished in the details of their implementations.

They therefore tend to be adapted to different sorts of problems.

Sophisticated organizations with a lot of experience may well use more than one of these approaches, but an organization that is getting started should select one approach and master it before attempting other approaches.

Agile Is Not A “Pick’n Mix” Methodology

Agile methods are highly systematic. Every component element of the methodology is crucial to the success of the methodology.

A common mistake is for an organization to embrace some elements of an agile methodology, such as the sprint, but to ignore or play down other elements, such as managing “technical debt.”

Such organizations enjoy the kudos that comes from rapid development and release of new code, but they are storing up trouble by failing to address technical debt.

Embracing Agile Is A Joint Business-IT Activity

The full benefits of agile cannot be achieved without engaging with business leaders, management and the user community.

If the rest of the business does not have an immediate appetite for working in a new way, careful planning and communication will be needed to bring different communities of managers and users on board.

With Agile, It Is Important To Walk Before You Try Running

Experienced agile practitioners can tackle large-scale developments — the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest.

But it takes many years to develop the necessary skills to be able to take on such large-scale software projects. Any organization that is starting out on the agile journey needs to start in the foothills to develop the confidence and competence to take on larger tasks.

Embracing Agile Is Embracing Continuous Learning

Agile practitioners must be committed to continuous improvement in quality and cost-effectiveness, which means that every development is analyzed for lessons that can be used to improve policies and working practices.

This analysis and learning are not the responsibility of a small number of senior practitioners; they are fundamental components of the workload of all agile practitioners.

Furthermore, the learning is not just appropriate to the programmers who are directly involved in software development; it is also essential for all the related skills, such as project management, architecture, quality assurance and IT budget management.

Agile Is About Teams And Teams Of Teams

The basic organizational unit of delivery in agile development is a small team, typically expressed as “seven, plus or minus two” people — both developers and quality assurance.

From an HR perspective, managing agile teams involves walking a fine line between keeping productive teams together and moving individuals between teams to encourage cross-fertilization of ideas.

If people are moved too frequently, the teams fail to develop into highly productive units; if people are not moved between teams enough, then each team starts to become isolated and diverges from the other teams.

It is important to note that physical location of teams is much more important with agile methods than with conventional approaches to development.

Documenting, Managing And Eliminating Technical Debt Is A Core Concept Of All Agile Methods

Technical debt is the difference between the state of a piece of software today and the state that it needs to be in to meet appropriate and necessary requirements for quality attributes such as reliability, performance efficiency, portability, usability, maintainability and security.

All development creates technical debt.

The difference with agile methods is that technical debt is recognized and added to the backlog, not swept under the carpet. Any organization that seeks to embrace agile methods must put in place the necessary elements of the chosen method dedicated to ruthless refactoring and the elimination of technical debt.

Working With Third-Party Development Service Providers On Agile Development Demands Special Care And Attention

Many user IT organizations have a long history of outsourcing application development to specialist service providers.

While there is a role for service providers in agile development, it is a very different commercial model and a very different engagement model.

Since colocation with business users is axiomatic to agile methods, the opportunities for sending large amounts of work offshore are somewhat limited, so some form of supplemental staffing is likely to be a more useful model.

The Impact Of Agile Goes Well Beyond The Software Development Teams

An integral component of the agile methodologies is the concept of “continuous delivery.”

Agile methodologies are predicated on continuous engagement with business managers and users, and lead to the delivery of a continuous stream of new and modified software into the operational environment.

This demands significant changes in working practices for both business governance and relationship management and the infrastructure and operations teams.

Other Software Development Methodologies Will Still Have A Place In Your Portfolio

In most commercial and public sector organizations, the application portfolio will present many different classes of development problems, some of which will be well-suited to agile, while some may be better-suited to incremental, iterative development and some to a modified waterfall model.

Agile is not “better”; it is simply better-adapted to some problems, but not so well-adapted to others.


Kindly share this post

Nigeria CommunicationsWeek believes that technology makes life more exciting and helps improve the lives of people around Nigeria and indeed the world. So since 2007, we have devoted our energy to independent reportage of technology and how they affect lives.

Continue Reading
Advertisement
Comments

E-Business

Microsoft Servers Hacked by Chinese Groups

Published

on

Kindly share this post

Chinese “threat actors” have hacked Microsoft’s SharePoint document software servers and targeted the data of the businesses using it, the firm has said.

Microsoft Servers Hacked by Chinese Groups

 

China state-backed Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon as well as China-based Storm-2603 were said to have “exploited vulnerabilities” in on-premises SharePoint servers, the kind used by firms, but not in its cloud-based service.

The US tech giant has released security updates in response and has advised all on-premises SharePoint server customers to install them.

“Investigations into other actors also using these exploits are still ongoing,” Microsoft said in a statement.

The firm said it had “high confidence” the hackers would continue to target systems which have not installed its security updates.

It added that it would update its website blog with more information as its investigation continues.

Microsoft said it had observed attacks in which hackers had sent a request to a SharePoint server “enabling the theft of the key material by threat actors”.

Charles Carmakal, chief technology officer at Mandiant Consulting firm, a division of Google Cloud, told reporter, it was “aware of several victims in several different sectors across a number of global geographies”.

Carmakal said it appeared that governments and businesses that use SharePoint on their sites were the primary target.

A number of adversaries who stole material encoded by cryptography were then able to regain ongoing access to the victims’ SharePoint data, he said.

“This was exploited in a very broad way, very opportunistically before a patch was made available. That’s why this is significant,” Carmakal said.

Carmakal said the “China-nexus actor” was deploying techniques similar to previous campaigns associated with Beijing.

Microsoft said Linen Typhoon had “focused on stealing intellectual property, primarily targeting organizations related to government, defence, strategic planning, and human rights” for 13 years.

It added that Violet Typhoon had been “dedicated to espionage”, primarily targeting former government and military staff, non-governmental organizations, think tanks, higher education, the media, the financial sector and the health sector in the US, Europe, and East Asia.

Meanwhile, Storm-2603 was “assessed with medium confidence to be a China-based threat actor”.

 

 

 


Kindly share this post
Continue Reading

E-Business

NIMC Warns Nigerians of Fake NIN Website

Published

on

Kindly share this post

National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has issued a public warning that it is not associated with NINcard.com.

NIMC Warns Nigerians of Fake NIN Website

According to the commission, the website has been circulating online to offer services for Nigerians seeking National Identification Number (NIN) services.

NIMC, in a post on its official X account on Wednesday, said, “NINcard.com is not in anyway affiliated to NIMC. Stay vigilant!”

The warning was accompanied by screenshots of fake payment receipts and OTP request pages from the website, both of which were boldly stamped “FAKE” by NIMC to alert the public.


Kindly share this post
Continue Reading

E-Business

NITDA, API Partner Against Harmful Online Content

Published

on

Kindly share this post

National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), in partnership with the Advocacy for Policy and Innovation (API), has convened a one-day workshop in Abuja to advance dialogue on the draft Online Harm Protection (OHP) Bill to confront harmful online content.

NITDA, API Partner Against Harmful Online Content

The bill, a rights-based, locally rooted, and multi-stakeholder initiative, is aimed at addressing the challenges of the digital age.

The event, which held yesterday, brought together government officials, civil society, academics, digital platforms, and legal experts to shape a policy framework designed to combat online ills such as cyberbullying, disinformation, hate speech, digital exploitation, and gender-based violence, while safeguarding democratic freedoms and digital inclusion.

In his keynote remarks, Kashifu Inuwa, director general, NITDA urged a paradigm shift in the way society engages with digital technologies.

“For almost two decades, we have viewed digital technology through a consumer lens. But these technologies are not just products and services. They are transforming how we live, work, and interact. They shape our politics, our society, and our democracy,” he said.

Warning against unaccountable digital power in the hands of private corporations, the DG likened the digital journey to the tale of Alice in Wonderland, where initial fascination with innovation has given way to deeper concerns about privacy, autonomy, and manipulation by big tech platforms.

“We thought we were using Google, but now we realise Google is using us. Social media, once a tool of expression, has become a tool of surveillance and influence,” Inuwa noted.

He, therefore, emphasised the urgency of developing a democratic and accountable framework.  He explained that following the 2021 Twitter ban, NITDA facilitated dialogue between the government and platform operators, leading to a Code of Practice that stressed Nigeria’s sovereignty and legal standards.

According to him, the same process birthed the multi-stakeholder steering committee and the OHP White Paper in December 2024, laying the foundation for the current legislative push.

Earlier in her opening remarks,  Victoria Manya, co-founder, API, observed the moral and civic necessity of the bill.

Her words: “The internet did not break society, it merely revealed its unfiltered version. Every day, Nigerians are exposed to harassment, disinformation, exploitation, and even algorithmic violence. The OHP Bill is not a war on the Internet. It is a peace offering to its users, a social contract for a digital future that is safe, inclusive, and democratic.

“We cannot answer the question of algorithmic power with unchecked state control. We must answer it with shared, rights-based governance. This bill must not be written for the people, but with them.”


Kindly share this post
Continue Reading

Trending