A White Paper Analysis from Orasi Software

Bimodal Management with HPE

Promoting Quality, Consistency, and Team Satisfaction

Bimodal Management with HPE

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Contents

6Preparing for the Transition

7Conclusion

3Executive Summary

How Bimodal Management Works

4The Benefits of Bimodal

5 Exploring the Tools

Bimodal Management with HPE

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Executive Summary With the 10th annual “State of Agile” report finding that only nine percent of firms are 100 percent agile, while 53 percent of firms report that fewer than half their teams are agile, organizations may be asking themselves, “Can we ever become a fully agile enterprise?” For many firms, the answer may not be yes. In fact, becoming 100% agile may not even be the most effective approach for many organizations.

Despite its benefits, the agile methodology isn’t right for every team and every project. Some enterprises may transition completely from traditional models to agile over time, especially as release needs evolve. However, the realities of corporate culture, resources, and even deliverables can make a full transition impractical at the present—if ever.

To address the various needs of software teams, savvy leaders are embracing a “bimodal” approach, where teams work with both traditional and agile execution models. This is a hybrid model, but it is not unstructured or inconsistent, as can be the case for some hybrid approaches. Rather, it is a purpose-built methodology not only for embracing a hybrid delivery model but also for managing it effectively.

This bimodal approach differs from many organizations’ hybrid systems in another way. It involves deployment of customized technologies across the organization with the objective of unifying teams, projects, and activities—from user story development through delivery. Such an approach provides a holistic view across hybrid models rather than necessitating that each model be managed independently. Bimodal management increases both management and team effectiveness, accelerating release cycles, improving quality, and promoting user satisfaction.

How Bimodal Management WorksWith a bimodal approach, teams continue to use traditional methods where they provide the most value, not because they don’t have the time or ability to master the rapid, tightly integrated release cycles of the agile model. Instead, the execution model—agile or non-agile—is purposefully selected based upon what will provide the best outcome with available resources and skill levels.

“Bimodal IT is the practice of managing two separate, coherent modes of IT delivery, one focused on stability and the other on agility. Mode 1 is traditional and sequential, emphasizing safety and accuracy. Mode 2 is exploratory and nonlinear, emphasizing agility and speed.”

—Gartner, Inc. IT Glossary

Bimodal Management with HPE

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With the help of integrated technology-based platforms such as HPE Agile Manager (AGM), with HPE Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), or HPE Quality Center (QC), managers and team leaders can manage project artifacts, defects, and other elements of software testing in both models with ease. Such integrated visibility and management affords a level of flexibility that is unparalleled in the software industry.

Once an appropriate infrastructure is in place, applications and systems under development move between traditional and agile approaches. These shifts are intentional, not spontaneous or reactive. For example, to respond to changing user demands or an accelerated need to eradicate defects in production, project and QA managers might determine that transitioning to an agile model would be the most effective course for specific projects. Because a unified management structure for both traditional and agile delivery would already be in place, none of the data or information acquired in the former process would be lost for the new one.

In such a scenario, these projects optimally would remain agile and not intentionally revert back to traditional processes at a later date. However, such potential would exist, for instance, if problems with release timing or resource allocation were causing important activities such as testing to be curtailed.

The Benefits of BimodalAchieving such a model requires some effort, especially for organizations whose teams are not already operating at a fairly sophisticated level. In our experience, teams that are stuck in “rudimentary mode,” using minimal or no process automation and/or project management solutions, may currently be unsuited to attempt agile at any level. Often, they would be better served by focusing on modernizing their existing processes first.

For organizations that lie somewhere between rudimentary and advanced operation using 100% traditional methods: Bimodal management offers the perfect opportunity to test the waters of agile while enhancing productivity and quality—and not lose existing investments in traditional processes and technologies.

In companies already using—or in the process of adopting—a hybrid model: Moving from hybrid processes, managed independently, to bimodal management will unify the effort, enable seamless execution, and prevent the breakdowns in communication, collaboration, and decision making that form and are perpetuated or even expanded over time.

Bimodal Management with HPE

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Exploring the ToolsNow that you know about bimodal and what it can do for your organization, let’s talk tools. At Orasi, we strongly support and promote the HPE universe of development, testing, and governance tools. In our experience, when organizations deploy advanced, integrated tools from a single company, they generally enjoy better team acceptance, more consistent, higher quality results, and faster solution payback. HPE is one of the few providers that has developed and continues to robustly maintain and support an end-to-end ecosystem of software lifecycle platforms and tools.

For the bimodal model specifically, we recommend HPE Application Lifecycle Management and HPE Agile Manager. The two solutions are completely integrated and provide 100 percent, bi-directional synchronization of their information. Users of HPE Quality Center—HPE Application Lifecycle Management’s predecessor—enjoy similar benefits when integrating it with HPE Agile Manager. These examples are only a suggestion of the power of HPE Agile Manager integrated with HPE Application Lifecycle Management or HPE Quality Center. The visibility and release management provided by this combined platform has been proven to significantly increase quality while enhancing team satisfaction and performance.

For truly universal software project management, organizations can also integrate HPE Project and Portfolio Management into the framework, integrating with HPE Agile Manager (and otherHPE products) through the “hub” of HPE Application Lifecycle Management. HPE Project and Portfolio Management standardizes, manages, and captures the execution of and operational activities for projects both traditional and agile, adding an additional level of control and enhancing the effort with visibility into team activities, timelines, and project goals.

HPE Agile Manager

Purpose-built to serve the unique needs of agile teams and their projects; natively integrated with HPE ALM.

A focused solution for planning, executing, and tracking agile development projects. Leaders can define release timelines, sprints, and teams; create, prioritize and assign backlog; and more.

HPE AGM workspaces synchronize with HPE ALM projects for viewing and/or updates of releases, requirements, and defects in both endpoints. For example, a defect status update in HPE AGM will be reflected in HPE ALM.

HPE Application Lifecycle Management

A leader in the industry for managing traditional waterfall or V-model projects. With HPE AGM, seamlessly incorporates agile projects, as well.

A centralized platform that enables all teams to view and manage the creation and reuse of assets and grasp the impact of change relating to requirements, testing, defects and development.

Manages and synchronizes release and asset activities at a very granular level. For instance, defects uncovered by automated regression suites or performance testing are automatically logged by HPE ALM and synched to HPE AGM.

Bimodal Management with HPE

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Preparing for the Transition To achieve the most from a bimodal approach, enterprises should ensure they can provide sufficient support to make unified visibility and management achievable—and useful. Following are three key supporting elements of a bimodal management model. There are other factors, required for any new approach, that we will not detail here. These include persistent management support and a flexible corporate culture.

Automation: The organization should have adopted, or be prepared to adopt, process automation at some level. Hybrid management doesn’t necessarily require automation. However, it benefits greatly from it. More importantly to adoption of the bimodal model, automation lays the groundwork for implementing more advanced technologies by promoting culture shifts and freeing up resources. It also helps team members (and leaders) let go of the territoriality that (among other issues) prevents software excellence and derails a unified effort.

Metrics Standardization and Governance: Before tackling bimodal management, organizations should standardize metrics among all the teams—agile or not. Standardization, often conducted as part of a unified “reporting framework,” promotes collaboration and ensures all efforts are evaluated consistently. It also makes it much easier for PMs to digest the information coming from the unified management platform. Metrics standardization and governance confers the added benefit of providing organization-wide benchmarks to measure the effectiveness of team efforts and foster quality assurance through continual improvement.

An Applied Planning and Operating Framework: Even with a unified approach to managing both agile and traditional projects, bimodal management offers the most benefit when teams work within a predictable, consistent environment. Organizations should have (or be prepared to define) concrete, strategic development and testing goals and pathways, with benchmarks for measuring progress toward those goals.

For more information, contact Orasi today.www.orasi.com | 678.819.5300

© 2016 Orasi Software, Inc. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice.

Orasi is a trademark of Orasi Software, Inc. All other product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

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In addition, critical path timelines, detailed team and project KPIs (as opposed to development and testing KPIs), and precise return on investment expectations are desirable, but not 100 percent required at the outset. Given their ability to promote excellence and help management quantify the benefit of improvement efforts, we encourage organizational leadership to adopt these and other “hallmarks of excellence” over time.

ConclusionManaging myriad software efforts effectively—without universal visibility—is difficult enough when an organization uses only traditional methods. With a hybrid model, adopting a universal management approach is essential to productivity and achievement. Gaining universal visibility with multiple methodologies requires preparation, commitment, and thoughtful, technology-driven project management. However, the synergies it creates—and the benefits it confers in terms of goal attainment, software quality, and both team and management satisfaction—can be spectacular.