Chapter 2. From Agile to Agility

This chapter highlights the need for greater agility at enterprise level and calls out the fact that merely adopting Agile methodologies is not enough to enhance agility. With the onset of the Information Age in the mid-1990s, many enterprises began using information technology (IT) as a means to gain competitive advantage. They started expecting IT divisions/vendors to support changing priorities, increase the speed of delivery, iterate the solution based on regular feedback, and lower the costs arising from the changing requirements. However, for decades, software delivery was based on the waterfall methodology [i], which is a rigid and heavyweight approach. Agile methodologies such as Scrum, XP, FDD, and DSDM emerged as a reaction to the challenges arising from the waterfall methodology.

However, agility as a capability is far bigger than Agile. This chapter will bring out the distinction between Agile and agility, and also examine the various facets of...