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D u r r e e s a m i n J o u r n a l ( I S S N : 2 2 0 4 - 9827)
S e p t e m b e r V o l 1 I s s u e 4 , Y e a r 2 0 1 5
Effectiveness of Blue Cloud Agile Implementation Process
Muhammad Usman Tariq
COMSATS Institute of Information Technology,
Islamabad, Pakistan
usmankazi100@gmail.com
Nawal Usman
International Islamic University,
Islamabad, Pakistan
ABSTRACT: This paper presents the analysis and limitations of new agile methodology implementation is a software
development company. The author explains the principles used in the implementation of the agile and scrum methodology to
achieve the customer satisfaction. The study is limited to analysis of agile methodology, its process and implementation. This
paper will help to build up the understanding about the basic agile and scrum methodology and effectiveness of
implementation.
Key words: Agile, Scrum, Software Development, Performance
1. Introduction
Most of the companies are now becoming
competent with the growing need to change in
organizational development and management. Different
companies follow different kind of processes, which
trigger different events to implement the change across
the organization. Software industry mostly follows the
basic waterfall methodology development processes
which consists of initial five phases of analyzing,
designing, testing, implementing and maintaining the
specific software system. The methodology is used since
long time, but with the growing competition in the
software market, companies have to adopt the latest
technologies. One of the mostly used methodology used
now a days for the software development is the agile
software development knows as Agile.
The agile software development combines
together group of software development methods
involving the collaborative requirements and solutions.
The methodology is self-organized based on cross
functional teams. It supports the changes in the
organization and software development during the
execution through the adaptive planning, early delivery,
continuous improvement, more releases, evolutionary
development and flexible process to adopt the change.
The agile development idea was first introduced in 2001.
The need of the incremental approached can be tracked
back to the earlier 1957 when am adaptive process was
needed in order to continuously implement the change
(Larman et al., 2003). Many methods were developed,
for the changes in the development process with growing
customer needs of enhancements during the development
phases. It is also called as light weight agile software
development process.
The basic agile is based on the following manifesto
*Individuals and interactions with the processes and tools
*Working of software with comprehensive
documentation
*Customer collaboration with the contract negotiation
*Responding change with following plan
The agile is based on 12 principles:
*Rapid delivery of software with customer satisfaction
*Welcoming change in requirements even in the late
development
*Working software has many releases and delivered
frequently
*Close communication between stakeholders, developers
*Projects being built around motivated individuals with
trust
*Direct real time face to face communication
*Software working is the basic measurement of the
progress
*Maintaining a constant pace with sustainable
development
*Reaching technical excellence and good design using
continuous focus
*Self-motivated and organizing teams
*Simplicity, not doing the work which is not required
*Continuous adaption of changes
The principles follow the manifesto of the agile
development regardless of the different conditions which
are required during the implementation of the agile
methodology in the projects. The software companies
must follow the agile principles and manifesto in order to
achieve proper implementation and benefits of the agile
methodology.
2. Overview of basic agile methods
There are many methods which are specific to the agile
software development, but the common point in all of
them are promoting the development, collaboration,
teamwork, change adaptability in the whole life cycle of
the project. These methods are further divided on the
basis of core theme of agile software development.
Iterative, incremental and evolutionary
The basic purpose of the agile methodology is to
breakdown the software development into little parts and
then develop them in increments with minimum load of
the planning and it does not support the long term
D u r r e e s a m i n J o u r n a l ( I S S N : 2 2 0 4 - 9827)
S e p t e m b e r V o l 1 I s s u e 4 , Y e a r 2 0 1 5
planning involved in the projects. The term used for the
short division is iteration. The iteration consists of small
timeframes from one week to four weeks. It involves all
the cross functional teams working in all the software
functions starting from the requirements, design,
planning, testing, verification, validation and delivery to
the customer. The iteration cycle manages to develop the
part in one iteration and it is demonstrated to the
stakeholder of the project. This helps to minimize the
risk involved in the development and provide the
adaption of changes quickly throughout the project
development. The iteration consists of adding the
minimum amount of the functionality that is required for
a release in the market.
Face to face communication and efficiency
Every agile software development must have a customer
service representative, no matter what is the software
development discipline. The person throughout
communicate with the stakeholders and the developers to
follow the changes which are required in the software. At
the end of the each process the customer representative
and stakeholder review the progress and priorities are
reevaluated to optimize the return of rate on the
investment. The agile software development manages to
update the information and many methods are used to
update the status of the software development within the
team and to the stakeholder.
Short feedback loop and adaptive cycle
The agile is based on daily meetings with the team
members to report each other the status of the project and
the obstructions. This makes the project changes adapt
quickly and manage the upcoming risk with priority
throughout the life cycle of the project. The errors can be
easily managed and prevented with the short feedback
approach.
Quality
One of the primary agile focus is quality. It focuses on
continuous combination of the process, unit testing, pair
programming, design patterns, code reviewing and many
other techniques in order to improve the quality of the
project. As the product is reviewed on the daily basis, it
also gives benefit to the stakeholders of having the
product near perfection.
Events that lead to the implementation of Agile at
Blue Cloud
The technology changes fast and new strategies are
required in order to stay in the competitive market. The
market provides trigger events which is change in the
environment that predicts the necessary change in the
organizational strategies and development (Spector,
2013). The triggers helps the organizations to develop a
new strategy that can be managed by the organization
involving new markets and products and termed as
strategic renewal.
The CEO of Blue cloud also followed a same trigger
event when he attended a seminar of promoting
technology aligned with the ideas which he desired to be
implemented in the organization. Based on the
knowledge from the seminar he shortened the cycle of
the software development along with implementation of
the agile methodology with collaboration and teamwork
Evaluation of Change Implementation
One of the requirement of the agile development
methodology is that it cannot be implemented all of a
sudden in the organization without discussion with the
employees as it brings a larger organization change.
Many of the employees were not aware of the agile
methodology in the organization and Skinner just made
and announcement of implementing the change in the
organization without consent of the employees. It did not
employ any non-behavioral and or behavioral changes
which made the employees all of the sudden focus on the
implementation of the methodology. Skinner should have
discussed it with the employees before implementing it
on a large scale in the organization. The strategic renewal
was all of the sudden and it did not involve the
employees. The strategic renewal always require two to
three transformation stages from tools and techniques
before implementing a new strategy in the organization.
It allows the employees to manage the implementation
and design the change process.
The sudden strategy change made it a more focus on the
increase in change of the behaviors in the organization.
The employees most of the time resist to new change and
their adaptability is less than the CEO of the
organization. Same happened within the Blue Cloud, the
checklist of the resistances must be made before
implementing the strategy in the organization which
would have involved all the employees. The changes in
the organization were not smooth and sources of possible
resistances includes:
1. Employees were used too of the status quo.
2. Employees were not included on the learning
process before the implementation of the change.
3. Employees do not know that why the need of
the change is
4. Employees think that it will not succeed as
there is no need of it.
5. Employees think that they have not being
asked for the change in the process which is not being
handled correctly.
6. Employees think that cost is outweighed and
management is no educated on the cost benefit analysis.
7. Employees take it as a personal threat as they
were not given tools that were required for the change in
the process.
Apart from the agile implementation in the organization,
Skinner did not focus on the Lewin’s three stages of
change (Spector, 2013).
1. Unfreezing. This stage involves adding up the
employees in the learning process and managing the
status quo dissatisfaction. It allows employees to learn
about the change. It would had helped the employees to
understand the change process and prevent the barriers
but same was not happened in the organization.
2. Moving stage. This stage focusing on making
the employees find out the strength and weakness in the
individual and teams. This could have helped the
employees to collaborate move with each other and
unitize the team environments. Also it would have
improved the release times of the software’s in order to
meet the new meeting deadlines.
3. Refreezing. This stage is the final stage of
changed and new status quo was to be re-identified but it
did not happen as Skinner did not implemented it.
D u r r e e s a m i n J o u r n a l ( I S S N : 2 2 0 4 - 9827)
S e p t e m b e r V o l 1 I s s u e 4 , Y e a r 2 0 1 5
Skinner should have followed the change implementation
methods in order to know the both positive and negative
resistance of the employees which is a necessity of
adapting and improving the organizational change
performance. The education of the employees was also a
necessity to improve the organizational performance.
Future Work and Conclusion
According to the given agile principles the employees of
the Blue Cloud will have to make behavioral changes in
the deadlines of software’s with a more frequent
timeline. Skinner references time line of a year for the
software development, which makes the employees set
their new deadlines and focus their own progress to
ensure that they meet the new frequent release
requirement. The varied response of the employees is
based on the lack of change or matching employee
attributes which requires strategic change brought by the
decision of implementing agile methodology in the
organization. If the employees were trained and
motivated before the decision, they resistance to the
change would had been less. The future of the Blue
Cloud is dependent on the engagement of the employees
as even after one year the employees are stating that it
would not be successful. The employee must be
encouraged to use the change process which could make
others to manage the change and prevent the change
implementation. Skinner should also review the
organizational change development techniques used by
Spector.
References
Spector, B. (2013) Implementing Organizational Change:
Theory into Practice. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River,
New Jersey: Pearson, p.2-49.
Larman, Craig; Basili, Victor R. (June 2003). Iterative
and Incremental Development: A Brief History.
Computer 36 (6): 47–56
