Dbenson and VersionOne, Inc., from Wikimedia Commons

In researching for my agile and lean methodology special report – which you’ll see in the March issue of SD Times – I spoke with about two dozen vendors, industry leaders and analysts to determine exactly how, 10 years after the agile manifesto was signed, enterprise development teams “go agile.” Turns out, entire enterprise companies are scaling agile, using the Scrum project management method to determine marketing strategy and even, in some cases, to guide executive meeting sessions.

Having just jumped into the world of enterprise development in January, the concept of agile and lean development seemed foreign at first and then I rationalized it – it’s a to-do list of sorts, only on a larger scale, with more interested/participating parties.

Scott Ambler, chief methodologist for agile at IBM Rational, said he got involved in the agile development process because it “resonated” with what he was already doing. Does this sound familiar? Was your team, department or even company thrown into agile because it simply was an extension of what you were already doing?

In trying to determine the future path of a fairly young methodology, it seems interesting that concepts applied to software development – a rather complex process, in my mind – can be applied to more concrete areas of the business. Developers deal with concepts and ideas, and agile helps guide the path, but as David Norton, Gartner analyst said – we all have waste and we all deal with ideas, even if they seem as concrete as a “to-do” list, they still need to be managed, assigned and completed in some sort of a time frame.

Perhaps we’re all living ‘agile’ lives (in the loose sense of the term) – in the world of programs and applications like “Things” and “Remember the Milk,” perhaps we’ve planned our lives down in an agile fashion to rid ourselves of the waste and procrastination. Do you think this is what you’ve done?

And if we’re all already doing this personally, do you think it makes it easier to bring this mindset to teams that have been working together for 10, 15 years? Executive support, according to Damon Poole, CTO and founder of AccuRev, is essential for success. Poole recommends widespread training to help change the mindset of the workforce. Has your company invested in this? Do you think it helps?

Share your thoughts on agile in the enterprise, and in pop culture, below.