TABLE OF CONTENTS In order to avoid repeated scenarios like the one described for Mark and Joe, the APIM considers timing the key. For the majority of businesses "faster, better, cheaper" is the mantra of the day. Businesses know that they must keep up in order to stay in business and the only way to do that is to meet their schedules, budgets, and realize the requirements they have signed up to meet.
The APIM uses the IDEAL SM Model, the Agile programming methodology, and lessons learned as a basis. This combination of successful models and methodologies provides the best method for ensuring that all the key aspects of Process Improvement are met in an agile fashion.
Agile Programming Methodologies claim to have changed the way software is developed. In many ways they have but the jury is still out on how successful these methodologies will be over the long run. The key element they bring to the software development community is that they make software developers question the way they develop software. With the numbers, as discussed in an earlier chapter, so astoundingly abysmal for successful software projects, when the software community starts questioning what could be wrong, it sets the stage for things getting better and that is a positive thing. Perhaps a melding of the old software development principles and the more agile development principles will show even more promise since many of the old and many of the newer agile principles have proven successful.
