If CEOs had Time to Code

Agile software development means different things to different people resulting in a wide variety of agile implementations, but the core goal is the same: The continuous and consistent delivery of quality software features on a just-in-time basis. Critical to achieving and supporting this goal is frequent feedback and clarification from the business domain experts that understand the business vision or strategies behind the requested software features. There are a number of perspectives that are helpful in understanding and always keeping this in mind as you plan or refine your agile implementation.

One intriguing idea is that of a CEO (or any person in an organization charged with driving organizational vision or strategy) developing software themselves, creating the ultimate feedback loop (from vision to delivery) for delivering software features.

In all companies decisions are routinely made reacting to shifts in the market, changes in business strategy or other demands and influences.  These decisions become plans that ultimately create new or modified business tactics that are necessary to implement the plans and support decisions.  More often than not, underlying software applications require modifications to support these new decisions. The faster an organization embraces changes in vision and makes supporting changes in functional and technical infrastructure, the more valuable the vision becomes.

Since people in non-technical management, strategy or visionary roles in most companies don’t develop software, they communicate or delegate changes to various areas and levels tasked with responding to needed technical changes.  This creates the need for overhead to manage communication and feedback efforts necessary to carry a strategic intent from initiatives as high as C-level folks down through the different areas of an organization, turning the plans into achievable activities.  Those activities are then often turned into supporting software features.

Although the notion of CEOs developing software is obviously highly unlikely, it does help illustrate the idea that the closer a software developer is able to get to the people holding the secrets to the business strategy they’re supporting, and the more feedback they can receive from the business experts, the faster and more accurately software features will be delivered and the more valuable the strategy becomes to the business.

Agile practices represent an opportunity to address this potential disconnect between the different communication layers by recognizing the need for less (or optimal) overhead and oversight and more (and more frequent) feedback and contact with business domain experts. Abstract and voluminous documentation and long development cycles can slow or disrupt the implementation of business initiatives, which are often moving targets.

Remembering the core goals of agile processes and perhaps keeping an image in mind such as a CEO developing a strategy, then leaning over a keyboard to deliver the relevant software features will help provide a proper frame of reference as you continue to identify potential areas of waste in your development processes and optimize your agile approach.