As Agile as a John Deere tractor

Posted on 27/01/2012 | 2 Comments

By David Bicknell

Thanks to Rally Software’s Agile Blog for a pointer to a Computerworld post about the use of Agile development at the tractor maker John Deere & Co.

It seems that John Deere has moved 800 software developers into an Agile development process  in around a year.

This involved recreating the company’s software development effort around new teams that included developers, systems engineers, customer support and marketing personnel, testers, all working closely together.

It is ironic that although  John Deere’s software development work is incremental through an Agile approach that is designed to deliver speed, innovation, quality, customer focus and teamwork,  the company’s actual move to adopt Agile as a development philosophy was more of a Big Bang approach than an incremental one, and was partly designed to overcome any resistance.

This entry was posted in Agile, Campaign4Change, change, change management and tagged , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

2 responses to “As Agile as a John Deere tractor”

  1. Pingback: How many organisations are failing to deliver on their Agile developments? | Campaign4Change

  2. najpierwmasa | 19/04/2012 at 12:09 | Reply

    Well, if they approach was more like a “big bang” they surely had reasons to do that. But it’s good to know that more companies are getting into agile developement methodology, as it will surely benefit them in the future.

    Like

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