Is Agile better fit for fast growing, small development companies or is it for software giants?
The answer is of course both, but implementation happens differently. In the case of Spotify it seems that successful implementation of Agile lead to quick and manageable growth. Scrum is mentioned as the key for success in competition with technology giants like Apple, Amazon, and Google.
Dr. Jeff Sutherland, the co-creator of Scrum analyzed the main factors of Spotify’s agile success. Microsoft, Google, Amazon are also using Scrum of course in a different scale with 15.000 or more programmers. For start-ups and small companies up to 50 or 100 programmers Scrum is fundamentally a better fit than any other development method. “This is the key to competing with new industry standards in software development” – said Dr. Sutherland.
Scrum enables quick delivery of results, with focus on customer values, and sets collaboration and communication as top priorities while encouraging lean thinking. It makes the team environment a happier place by facilitating a transparent, cooperative attitude at work.
In Spotify’s case the key elements of Agile success are highly educated management in Agile practice, where teams are led by masters of Scrum. Furthermore they gave freedom for small clusters of development teams and dedicated the development of a piece of product to them. It ensures easier change, and upgrade constantly without breaking anything else. In addition they focus is on constant problem solving, removal of roadblocks.When a business is growing, roadblocks will arise that can slow down the speed and sometimes risk the quality of software development. The correct attitude is to deal with those issues by constantly monitoring potential obstacles, and removing them before they become a bigger problem.
Agile Project Management Tools can be invaluable support for teams working with Scrum. codeBeamer supports SCRUM based development with Kanban board agile planning board and sprint-release planning. In Javaforge small and start-up companies can try and use it for free for Open Source Projects. For enterprise use codeBeamer is available with special pricing conditions for start ups with small teams (up to 10 users).
Intland Software is committed to assisting start ups and small enterprises to reach their Agile potential!
This article was inspired by reading “Eric Ries: The Lean Startup”.