Title: Metagility

Subtitle: Managing Agile Development for Competitive Advantage

Author: David A. Bishop

Details: Hardcover, 6×9, 268 pages, ISBN: 978-1-60427-155-3, January 2019

Retail Price: $44.95

JRP Direct Price: $39.95

Exclusively for the PM/BA Times community, use the coupon code: BAPM20 at checkout to save an extra 20% on J. Ross Publishing titles.

Reviews:

“Bishop’s Metagility uses a vortex as a means to coordinate parallel product development activities. It’s an exciting new way to think about managing software development in the age of digitalization.”

—Richard Baskerville, Regents’ Professor, Georgia State University

“Dr. Bishop’s book offers tremendous value to executives tasked with leading others to improve speed to market. Lessons drawn from careful study of a number of organizations are thoughtfully deployed to create a toolkit that readers can use to develop and leverage agility.  It’s a guide that will make the reader a better leader.”

—Nathan Bennett, Ph.D., Co-author of Riding Shotgun and Academic Advisor to the COO Circle

Description

Agile methodologies have become a popular and widely accepted method for managing software development.  However, despite this success, managing agile methods has proven to be a real challenge for most companies, particularly those with complex products such as IoT devices and large development environments.  As such, agile methods are changing.  Many companies have been forced to adopt a hybrid version of agile and waterfall techniques, and this hybrid approach is fast becoming the norm rather than the exception in the industry.

Metagility: Managing Agile Development for Competitive Advantage is the first book to provide a comprehensive approach for managing a new and highly effective breed of agility from the executive level on down.  Based on scientific theory and practitioner research, it is the definitive playbook for those seeking the optimal solution for adapting agile to more complex product development and organizational contexts. This desk reference shows organizations how to manage both agile and waterfall techniques to outperform their competition in industries with very high technological change, turbulent markets, and innovation.

Key Features

• Provides valuable insights and guidance on how to manage hybrid agile implementations in situations where traditional agile methods typically fall short, such as with embedded systems where the hardware, firmware, and software are developed in tandem, and for large enterprises and distributed teams
• Presents new language for understanding agility including concepts such as business momentum and agile vorticity that provides cutting-edge insights into a company’s position in its market
• Describes a method to determine what true agility means and how to achieve it for your company both within your internal organization and your position in the marketplace
• Shows how to determine the proper mix of agile and waterfall characteristics for your organization to help you get the most out of your agile strategy in today’s highly competitive and innovative markets
• Supplies tools that provide not only the monitors and gauges, but the dials and knobs executives can utilize to affect change and achieve optimal results from their agile implementation
• WAV offers an agile metrics calculator, agile artifact template, user story workflow info-graphic, and other valuable resources—available from the Web Added Value™ Download Resource Center at www.jrosspub.com

 About the Author

Dr. David A. Bishop is a technology consultant, enterprise architect, researcher, and instructor with over 25 years of experience working with clients such as AT&T, BellSouth, EDS, Delta Airlines, Toshiba, and government agencies.  In addition to this experience, David holds an ABET accredited Bachelor of Computer Engineering degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology, an MBA from DeVry University with a concentration in IT management, and a Doctorate in Business Administration from Georgia State University.  David is CEO and Founder of Agile Worx, a software development firm that provides program and project management tools based on this research.  He is a member and committee chair for the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) based in Geneva Switzerland, a member of ANSI, and a Senior Member of the IEEE and the Association for Computing Machinery.  David is also founding chairman for the Atlanta IEEE Technology and Engineering Management Society.