Bridging from waterfall to agile ways of working

Bimodal development is an enterprise approach mixing traditional IT methodologies with those that are built with the dynamic nature of the digital world. Enterprises must strive to become the frontrunners of innovation, or risk being left in the dust by their competition. "Bimodal development" was coined by Gartner to educate their clients and the market about how to prepare to incorporate digital innovations into the way they operate, or risk being disrupted.

While many IT teams have lived in the world of agile for quite some time, some organizations have not taken that same approach to the broader aspects of their PMO, portfolio, and enterprise levels.

We often find that many enterprises have agile teams under waterfall management, and they're not yet ready to adopt agile across all teams or functions in their organization—with good reason. However, there are some fundamental approaches organizations can follow in their agile adoption to safely take on large-scale agile change management.

At Jira Align, we know that transformation does not occur overnight. The move from traditional development models to an agile framework may need to be paced throughout the organization, since it may not be possible for all groups to transform simultaneously. Jira Align is the only platform for agile transformation that helps you evolve your teams' agile maturity as you work through transformation at scale. Here are just a few ways that Jira Align supports this need:

•  Scorecards and project intake process allowing organizations that score and rank projects in their portfolio to execute their strategic planning process.

•  Capacity and resource planning modules allowing PMOs and project managers to simultaneously model resource allocations across both waterfall and agile areas of the organization.

•  Forecasting and "What If Analysis" modules allowing you to predict delivery horizons across both waterfall and agile areas of the business.

•  Enterprise financial reports allowing you to plan, measure, and report on financial aspects of the software delivery process.

•  Milestone-based planning and tracking allowing you to plan the delivery of software in a commonly understood approach.

•  Project-based dependency model allowing portfolio managers responsible for strategic planning and roadmapping to link high-level projects not just delivery features.

Enterprise agility is required to effectively compete in every industry, especially as every organization becomes more digitally capable. Driving alignment while guilding an evolution from waterfall to agile will help your organization survive and thrive in this rapidly changing world.