Can Agile work in large enterprise?

Compare the software release cycles of any large organisation with the speed at which smaller, agile teams iterate and it becomes starkly obvious why enterprise IT departments can often struggle for relevance.

In the banking and finance sector, especially, strict governance and project disciplines such as ITIL have slowed CIOs’ capacity to innovate at the pace business users demand.

Some organisations have successfully adopted Agile practices in small teams, but generally have found it difficult to scale that project discipline to the wider enterprise.

Outsourcing to smaller, third-party development teams offers an alternative means of achieving the speed-to-market the business desires.

This creates a new set of challenges around governance and transparency. Even if the technology group desires a shift to agile processes, stakeholders in legals, finance and procurement often resist.

Naturally, these stakeholders desire for third parties to be bound to fixed deliverables or milestones in the contract. How do they manage third parties that play by a different set of rules?

Can large organisations maintain controls but embrace faster delivery of new services?

iTnews has partnered with IBM to host a breakfast discussion to thrash out the issue with senior IT leaders on Wednesday 20th March 2013 at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney.

CIOs, IT project leads or software delivery executives are welcome to register their interest to attend.