Agile development methodologies have proven their strength during the coronavirus pandemic. In the future, they could provide the key to unlocking the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI).
When COVID-19 sent society into lockdown, CIOs and their teams were tasked with building new collaboration platforms and business models in days and weeks, not months or years. became.
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Countless CIOs have told ZDNET during the pandemic that agile development methodologies — where teams continually review, inspect, and adapt technology to deliver applications flexibly and quickly — are the key to scalable technology solutions. It is said to provide a path to.
The IT team learned a lot during the process. Technology experts used agile techniques to collaborate with business colleagues to deliver systems and services.
Companies also learned from that rapid development process. IT departments have traditionally been viewed as cost centers. During the pandemic, IT departments have proven their worth, keeping employees connected and productive despite difficult conditions.
New challenges are now at hand. The rapid rise of generative AI is creating new pressures on IT departments.
Senior executives across the enterprise are hearing the hype about the benefits of tools like Open AI's ChatGPT and Microsoft's Copilot and want their organizations to reap the benefits of data-enabled productivity in their productivity. .
Just as it scaled up its technology during the pandemic, the company is now looking to get ahead of its competitors and gain a competitive edge by tactically deploying generative AI services. That's where Agile comes in handy.
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ZDNET contributor Vala Afshar recently discussed how companies can leverage agile to explore generative AI technologies. We do this by fostering a culture of experimentation that encourages all employees to explore and fail fast.
Toby Alcock, CTO of Logicalis, echoes this sentiment. He told his ZDNET that Agile should be well-suited to exploring emerging technologies.
“Agile is the ability to respond quickly to business outcomes, to deliver, add to, evolve, and continue to deliver business outcomes rapidly,” he said. “In that scenario, I think agile development has great potential to enable generative AI projects.”
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Alcock recently explained to ZDNET that effectively integrating AI into the business will be a top priority for CIOs in 2024.
A recent survey by his firm of 1,000 global digital leaders found that 89% want to implement AI in their organizations in 2024, and 85% have budgeted for AI development. It was suggested.
However, other research suggests that the pace of delivery is not keeping up with the demand for AI. While some organizations are exploring ways to improve productivity and customer service with AI, few are implementing the new technology into their production environments.
According to the Carruthers and Jackson Data Maturity Index, 87% of data leaders say AI is only used by a small number of employees in their organization or not at all.
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The consultancy's CEO, Caroline Carruthers, recently told ZDNet that most companies suffer from “AI paralysis,” and companies that boast high levels of AI maturity, established AI departments, and well-defined AI processes said it was only 5%.
She said the right approach for most organizations is to focus on small problems where parts of the business can use generative AI to make a big difference.
Companies should use the project as a testing ground for the technology and build other use cases that adhere to best practice guidelines for business outcomes, funding, governance, and security.
Agile methodologies inherently focus on iterative processes and continuous improvement during sprints of work, and should be well-suited for experimenting with generative AI.
Nigel Richardson, European senior vice president and CIO at PepsiCo, is a big fan of agile and one of the digital leaders who understands that this methodology may be the best way to leverage AI. It's a person.
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“Most current delivery models can be described as agile. I'm a big believer in reducing cycle times,” he told ZDNET. “The big problem with the waterfall method is that it takes a long time to find faults. With Agile, you can quickly tell if what someone wants is what they really want. So , I'm a big supporter of Agile.”
Richardson said the key to successfully using agile is understanding the problem before you start.
He estimated that about 80% of the development work done by PepsiCo used agile development and the remaining 20% used waterfall.
From building apps to tackling AI, Agile brings fun to the development process.
“I remember being involved in a huge waterfall project that sucked the life out of the team because things were moving so slowly,” he said.
And can AI become a team player in collaborative software development?
“The advantage of Agile is that you see the results of your work faster and get feedback. This applies to innovation in general. The more cycle time you can reduce, the better.”
Hakan Yaren, CIO of APL Logistics, told ZDNET that another advantage of agile is that it is well suited to modern digital environments.
Analyst Gartner suggested that 80% of technology products and services this year will be built by people who are not technology experts.
Yaren said agile focuses on integrated thinking and cross-business approaches, and is well suited to the decentralized nature of modern IT.
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“AI and the cloud have lowered the barriers to entry and empowered business stakeholders to make IT decisions,” he said. “Agile is a good methodology to address many of these processes because of the speed of change.”
However, Yaren has a warning for IT professionals. As more line-of-business employees test new technologies, the complexity they face is likely to increase.
“It's becoming more difficult to connect these solutions and make sure they're secure and reliable and can connect the dots,” he said.
“Even as companies buy HR and legal systems with these capabilities, the question of how to deal with that complexity is something technology departments still have to worry about.”
Dan Eddie, director of customer services at UK healthcare solutions provider Simplyhealth, says building meaningful relationships between business and IT ensures digital exploration in agile organizations doesn't lead to system complexity. Said to be helpful.
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“It's a two-way street in terms of value. Within our organization, collaboration is the essence of how we work,” he told ZDNET.
“We are a product-driven business, which means everything is customer-focused, so collaboration across product, sales, service and technology to deliver results through sprints is key to success. Masu.”
Conversations during a sprint can be difficult. People in IT and other business departments will have different opinions and priorities.
“Sometimes you win these arguments with good data and influence, but sometimes you don't because the data isn't strong enough or something else drives a better outcome for the customer,” Eddy said. Told. “But the essence of effective collaboration is building strong relationships, which ultimately means trusting your way of working.”
