Taking a leaf out of rugby rule books, a bunch of techies working out of Bangalore are seeking to put the 'sprint' back into the IT services business by 'scrumming' workable code in the shortest possible time to meet client needs.

With the economic turmoil, customers have often been unable to commit investments, and decided to withdraw IT projects midway. Moreover, many are now demanding that IT vendors do more with less, that too in a shorter timeframe.

That is exactly what agile software development does.

Though around for many years, new economic realities are making the need felt for agile software development — a framework that breaks up the project into chunks resulting in smaller packets of shippable code within the shortest possible time, sometimes even a week.

"It has become relevant because business cycles are changing very fast and customers are not sure if they want to be involved in engagements with an uncertain future," said Bob Sarni, agile practice leader at the $1.2 billion US-based systems integration firm Ciber Inc, who was here last week to evangalise the concept.

The basis for agile software development is small teams of self-motivated and self-organised code writers and managers, usually 7-10 people, (thus the name 'Scrum', from rugby lingo for restarting the game either after an accidental infringement or when the ball is out of play), who huddle together, plan, execute and deliver working components of the software product, something akin to principles of lean manufacturing.

There are several methodologies under the agile software framework, but Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP), are two of the most popular.

"Unlike the traditional framework, where the project is seen in its entirety, in agile software development, everything is broken into priorities or time boxes, resulting in shippable software code or iterations," Sarni said.

Money is tight in the market, and uncertain. Agile provides the opportunities to reduce cost of development and achieve payback on the investment sooner than in the traditional approach by allowing decisions on the product future before making the full investment, explained the expert who is a thought leader in the agile software space and is the only person to obtain all the certifications from the Scrum Alliance, a group of people sworn to the Scrum methodology. There are some 50,000 such people worldwide today.

"The industry is seeing the need and seeking the change. The traditional development model is good, but it takes a long time before the customer sees anything. In today's market that is a long time when we don't have visibility of the next quarter," pitched in president, Ciber India, Raghurama Kote, whose team is executing 3-4 such projects.

"We have seen a lot more of requests from customers, including government clients, asking to use the agile framework as the costs and risks are much lower," said Sarni adding the real savings come from the extremely low wastage of resources, be it code, time or money, as everything is based on prioritising work.

Moreover, testing of the software is operationalised even before the project begins and it is automated unlike in the traditional approach where you come to know of the glitches only close to the end of the project. Productivity of the teams is also higher as they are self-motivated, and self-organised resulting in high product ownership.

But how suitable is the framework for India, which has thrived on outsourcing based on sheer execution by techies who are basically told what to do?

"There might be some difficulties getting there, as Indians might be hierarchical in approach to work. The teams here still need leadership and guidance so to that extent the model needs some tweaking," agreed the expert. "The Indian IT services industry is not yet hooked onto agile software development, but I think it will be forced to, given the ever-changing dynamics of business where the customer wants immediate results and visibility," added Kote.

C Chitti Pantulu/ DNA-Daily News & Analysis Source: 3D Syndication