Agile software systems are supposed to be very dynamic. They should allow a company to change its’ business practices and adapt to changing business conditions as new business opportunities arise. In theory agile scheduling solutions will allow your business to out perform your competition by giving you the ability to reinvent yourself. In real life this can be a mixed blessing.

Agile scheduling systems can certainly be quite valuable in the hands of the right people. One of the problems that we often see as developers is that while agile scheduling is possible good systems analysis is the larges prerequisite to a good scheduling solution. We’ve found that as agile systems evolve and are deployed in the marketplace there are two strong ingredients required to implement a high quality planning application that is lean.

The first in gradient is a very strong vendor that possesses a strong capability to enhance their product in a short cycle. Tuppas and ShopFloorReporting.com are both companies that you might want to take a look at in this regard. Both companies use a a framework that can be accessed and altered via a browser based rapid application development environment RAD. In addition they both allow the customer to rework the system themselves. Sort of like an open source capability but not.

The next ingredient that’s equally important is a good team on the customer side. Most applications that are agile can be developed rapidly and it’s easy to get carried away. It’s almost a good idea to work with a “less is more” approach. This allows you to put a system in motion quickly and reap a 90% reward rapidly then fine tune while the system is in motion. Over-designing is one of the biggest tendencies that we’re seeing with highly configurable systems.