Serena Software program pushes agile development practices for apps life-cycle management
By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 8/2/2007 9:44:00 AM
Serena Software, a provider of application life-cycle management (ALM) solutions and strategies, offers a unique new program to help enterprise IT organizations quickly adopt and integrate Agile software development practices. Agile in the Enterprise includes advisory services, training and coaching services as well as two new product offerings, Serena Agile Accelerator for Mariner and Serena Agile Accelerator for TeamTrack.
Agile development practices encourage communication and collaboration within application development teams. With Agile, everyone involved in software development projects—from programmer to user to manager—is empowered to quickly respond to ever-changing software development requirements. As a result, Agile adoption rates are on the rise yet enterprises need help putting it to work in their organization, especially when teams are globally dispersed using a mix of tools and methodologies. According to an independent survey commissioned by Forrester Research, "One-sixth of enterprises currently use Agile processes, and twice as many are aware of Agile processes."1
Agile in the Enterprise: Serena's Take
Serena provides a four-pillar approach to support Agile in the Enterprise:
—Advisory services to help organizations understand why they should consider adopting Agile practices, as well as the benefits and costs of Agile adoption;
—Strategic partnerships with leading Agile training and services vendors;
—Expert coaching to enable successful projects; and
—Enterprise-class software that accelerates the adoption of Agile and encourages individual team flexibility and innovation.
As a proponent and practitioner of customer-centric Agile product development approaches, John Scumniotales, Serena's vice president of product management, has spent nearly 20 years at the forefront of the software and technology marketplace. In the early '90s while at Easel Corporation, Scumniotales pioneered several software development tools and processes. At Easel, he co-invented the Scrum Agile development methodology and was the first ScrumMaster. Scumniotales joined Serena via its acquisition of Pacific Edge Software.
"Over the past 12 months, Agile adoption has soared among large companies - including a significant number of our own customers," said John Scumniotales, vice president, product management, Serena Software. "However, adopting Agile involves more than tossing the latest buzz words around and adopting new tools. It's about making fundamental changes around how organizations conceive, construct, and test applications and products. To be successful and to minimize disruption to the business, they will require expert help with Agile adoption. There is no one in the ALM space better positioned than Serena to drive Agile adoption across the enterprise. Our complete solution focuses on customer success."
Agile Adoption on the Rise
SolutionsIQ, a leading provider of information technology services, consulting and staffing, has a supporting view of the state of Agile adoption in the enterprise.
"Most large IT organizations are using Agile in some capacity whether the management team knows it or not," said Charlie Rudd, CEO, SolutionsIQ. "The shift we have seen recently is that Agile is now appearing on the CIO's agenda as a top-down initiative in many organizations, which has major implications for existing project management and development processes. This has IT directors trying to set a course that embraces application development's aspirations to become more agile while simultaneously meeting IT management and business stakeholder demands for transparency and control of the portfolio, resource, and financial management functions."
John Scumniotales continued, "Inside Serena we practice what we preach, with some teams using Agile and others using traditional methodologies. We don't dictate - we direct. Whether you're working with Agile, Waterfall, CMMI, bespoke - we're squarely focused on what's right for each organization. And these accelerators and services support an approach to multiple methodologies that we believe will help customers build on their development successes."
