Agile Software Development Imperative for Efficient SaaS Operations

New SIIA white paper outlines process

 WASHINGTON, DC - March 6, 2007. The Software & Information Industry Association, the principal trade association for the software and digital information industry, today announced the release of a new white paper from its SaaS Executive Council. "The Agile Imperative for SaaS" is a product of the ISV Best Practices Committee and focuses on the changes required of engineering organizations to support the cultural shift associated with the SaaS model.

Traditional plan-driven, "waterfall" development approaches simply do not work in the SaaS model. In traditional models used by on-premise software companies, clear feedback on customer uptake, usage and sales blockers often takes six to eight months after release to reach product management and engineering. In a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business, teams get immediate feedback from customers and typically have vast amounts of usage and adoption data to help guide rapid decision making.

"Agile development allows SaaS programmers to keep up with the myriad demands placed on their skills, to develop as efficiently and effectively as possible," said David Thomas, Executive Director of the SIIA Software Division. "This white paper brings the best practices of Agile programming to our members in a succinct form that can help them build a more efficient organization. That is the purpose of our SaaS Executive Council."

Agile software development provides the ability to achieve significantly greater resource efficiencies, while closing the feedback loop quickly. That helps manage the extreme expectations associated with SaaS services. This paper focuses on what the engineering team needs to do and provides an outline of the Agile development process, championed by several development communities such as Xprogramming, the Scrum Alliance and DSDM.

"SaaS is forcing a fundamental change in the way smart software companies develop their products," said Ryan Martens, founder and CTO of Rally Software and co-author of the white paper. "By leveraging Agile methods, SaaS providers can reduce cycle times to weeks, adjust rapidly to customer feedback and move testing to the front of the process. Software agility is the only process that will allow a SaaS engineering team to deliver continuous value, quality and user loyalty."

Press wishing a copy of the white paper may request it from SIIA. The paper is posted for SIIA members only at www.siia.net/press/releases/saas_agile_development.pdf.

About SIIA

The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) is the principal trade association for the software and digital content industry. SIIA provides global services in government relations, business development, corporate education and intellectual property protection to more than 800 leading software and information companies. For further information, visit www.siia.net.

About Rally

From an initial pilot project to enterprise rollout, Rally helps organizations succeed with Agile software development - one of the fastest growing trends in the technology industry. Rally's Agile life cycle management products give teams the visibility and collaboration needed to deliver high-value software in rapid iterations, and its world-renown coaching services help mentor teams to create internal Agile experts. Rally maps an incremental road to Agile adoption for thousands of subscribers from leading software vendors, Internet companies and corporate development teams. Based in Boulder, Colo., the company is privately held and backed by Mobius Venture Capital, Boulder Ventures and Vista Ventures. For more information, visit www.rallydev.com.

Press Contact: Anne Greenhaw
303-565-2832
anne@rallydev.com

---

More press by year

• 2010
• 2009
• 2008
• 2006
• 2005
• 2004