Israel Gat is a Senior Consultant with the Cutter Consortium. He specializes in technical debt techniques, large scale Agile implementations and expanding Agile to IT Operations (‘DevOps’).

Israel is recognized as the architect of the agile transformation at BMC Software. He holds a PhD in computer sciences from the Israeli Institute of Technology and an MBA from Clark University.

You have been practicing Agile in some form for a while, but I see you are also tracking a lot of new ideas and developments in Agile practice. What are your favorite recent developments in Agile?

I am very excited about three developments:

1. The coming of age of technical debt techniques: The ability to monetize technical debt establishes a clear tie between the output of the software process (the code) and the business outcome (the real value of the code). For example, something is not quite working if a technical debt amounting to $5M has been accrued against a net present value of $10M.
2. The use of Statistical Process Control (SPC) techniques in governing software processes: The enormity of the opportunity to apply the full richness of the SPC research that had been accumulating since the 1920’s to software development is breath taking.
3. DevOps: The expansion of Agile to IT Operations amplifies the value of the Agile initiative. To quote you, it is (software) delivery over development.

The mutual interaction between technical debt, SPC and DevOps is most promising. It facilitates progress from enterprises practicing Agile to agile enterprises.

What advice do you have for executives who are contemplating or in the middle of an Agile transition? What would you focus on first?

I would start with a simple software governance framework that the executive team accepts and commits to. Such a framework governs the software process through the outputs it produces and the outcomes it enables. It elevates the playing fields from the nuts and bolts of Agile (or any other software method) to the business of software – investment, risk, return, etc. By so doing, the foci for Agile become very clear: the teams focus on Agile proficiency; the exec on what Agile means in business terms. To succeed you need both: proficiency in Agile as well as effective governance.

From my experience Agile adoptions suffer when there is not alignment from the executives down and from the engineers up. (Frankly any methodology will suffer) You have published a lot of advice for executives in this regard, what advice do you have for the people on the frontline who are trying to get some executive understanding and support?

Identifying the pain(s) one tries to address through the Agile initiative and securing broad agreement about the criticality of this pain is the most important element in aligning the executive team with the folks in the trenches. Any Agile initiative of scale will sooner or later have to report what has been accomplished by the initiative. Accomplishments to themselves are not too meaningful unless the loop all the way back to the driving pain is closed.

Since you were at Agile Roots last year, what was your favorite thing from last year and what would you say to someone who is considering attending this year?

There was something special in the air in Agile Roots 2009. The experience was most gratifying to me and every participant I spoke with. You can certainly get a glimpse of Agile Roots 2010 by reading about it after the conference has been held, but there is no substitute to savoring it in person in Salt Lake City…

Israel’s e-book, ‘The Concise Executive Guide to Agile‘ has just been issued by the IEEE Computer Society. In addition to regularly publishing with the IEEE Computer Society and the Cutter Consortium, he posts frequently at his blog The Agile Executive and tweets as @agile_exec.

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