Top 10 indications that you are ready for a successful transition to Agile

With the challenging economic times, very few organizations are ready and willing to allocate large budgets and extended time lines before they get to leverage their investment. As such, transitioning to an approach that provides more flexibility and faster results seems like a logical choice.

Below is what we believe are the “Top 10 indications that you are ready for a successful transition to Agile” for your BI projects. It is obvious that an organization can begin a successful transition to Agile without having all 10 conditions but it is important to remember that the chances of success and the duration of the transtion will decrease as the number of conditions available increases.

1. Your business users are already heavily involved in the development activities
2. Your development team is successful in developing within defined time boxes
3. Face-to-face and open communications are preferred to paper documentation and email communications
4. Your organization has already had success implementing an Agile approach for other projects
5. You are comfortable letting your customers take full control of the development process (requirements definition, answering questions during development, specify the required tests, ensure the results meet the expectations, and sign-off on the completed work) while maintaining flexibility on their priorities
6. Your project team is used to prioritizing their needs and is able to determine which items are more critical (and which ones can wait)
7. Management recognizes that adapting to the situation at hand is far better than spending countless hours in defining a detailed project plan
8. The business sponsor, end users, and the development team are comfortable with iterative and incremental development and delivery
9. Your organization has already invested into a data warehouse on which to build
10. Your management team and the company culture can tolerate that people make mistake as long as they can learn from them (and that the mistakes aren’t huge and irreparable)