30 Minute Interview

Creating agile technology

Eddy Pauwels, Product Marketing Director, Serena Software, spoke to Nivedan Prakash, about the company's Agile software and the benefits that can be derived from it

Eddy Pauwels

Tell us about Agile Lifecycle Management tools.

At Serena, we have been active in the application development space for over 27 years during which time we have watched the gradual adoption and growth of Agile software development processes. As we watched Agile move from the early adopter stage, across the adoption chasm into the early majority we have seen it hit a number of problems, like the compromise between business and developer needs making it difficult to decide, the scaling of Agile to a multi-everything (multiple teams working on multiple projects from multiple locations) kind of environment, as well as the cost, time and money to adopt and transform to Agile. Adopting and scaling Agile principles can be time consuming, costly and difficult to do without the right tools and know how.

So we set out to create a completely new way for companies to become agile and make an Agile transformation. We started to build a tool that could specifically address the needs of the modern enterprise, and the VP of Application Development who wants the benefits of Agile but has a multi-everything environment where visibility is key. We designed a tool that developers will love to use, because they love Agile. Finally we added information that managers need to run the department, information and visibility for planning, budgeting and compliance.

We have enabled support for any type of Agile that an organization might be using, even if they would use their own flavor of Agile. We also made it easy to use. Most developers only need to use an Agile tool for a few minutes every day. We have made it easy for them to go to one screen, update their story points, see the burn-down chart and check the story wall. Of course I should also not forget to mention that our Agile on Demand offering is a SaaS offering reducing many admin, maintenance and hardware costs.

While the principles of Agile are easy to understand, putting it into practice in a way that it scales into the enterprise can be a challenge. Agile On Demand was designed to support the Agile principles purely, but making it scale better through the use of technology. Using post-it notes and whiteboards for managing the work is fine, but if your team members or stakeholders are not within the same room, this approach can be a challenge. Agile On demand, being Web-based, only requires network access to have the team sync up, discuss and plan within a virtual environment. Updates or estimated, actual or remaining hours are automatically aggregated and reflected in updates reporting such as burn up and burn down charts. This saves a lot of time and reduces the risk of human error. Discussions done by the teams could also be tracked in the tool for historical data.

What kind of adoption curve do you expect for Agile in the Indian/APAC market?

The adoption curve of the tool is related to the adoption curve of Agile as a way of doing development. Specifically for India, you see that there are a lot of service companies, varying from conducting development to hosting and managing the applications for their clients. Many of them are already deploying Agile techniques within certain projects, so the competence is building. Often you see a transition or a blend of waterfall and Agile techniques trying to take the best of both worlds. A big risk with the adoption of Agile principles is that we have been trained for decades to think in Waterfall terms, this means that whenever people come under stress they fall back to their old habits, reducing the adoption speed of the new approach. The current economic crisis on its own is already a stress factor for many organizations, who try to reduce cost and risk everywhere possible. So we need to see. One thing that is sure is that the Indian population is eager to learn and adapt, and many young people are entering in the software development world. The less they have been brainwashed with Waterfall thinking, the easier it will be for them to adopt Agile.

This being said, many organizations in India are building practices to propagate and embrace Agile methodologies. These teams also aid implement strategies to adopt Agile principles. With such structures in place, the expectation is that acceptance of Agile methodologies will increase quickly.

What is your take on Cloud Computing and Lean BPM?

With Lean BPM we address a need of customers looking for a simple intuitive solution that can be used not only by developers (using Java or .NET) but also by technology savvy business users, exploiting the various Web services built over the past couple of years. SOA and Web services are nice, but if nobody can make use of it (either by not having the time (developers) or not having flexible and not-too-low-level tools) then the effort of building all these services is a waste of time.

How can businesses benefit from Serena's solutions in today's sluggish economy?

During recessions, organizations try to optimize and if possible reduce cost wherever they can. Within application development, one can only reduce or improve operation if sufficient visibility is offered into the process. Serena's end-to-end ALM offering addresses automation to drive efficiency and productivity and the ability to provide insight into the way of operations; it is critical to get insight into what to improve and focus on. Our Lean BPM provides the exact same functionality focus (automating processes, and delivering insight) but concentrates more the orchestration of disjoint processes and human workflows. Software-as-a-Service also helps reduce risk and costs, as this brings in a pay-as-you-use mechanism.