Are we really ready for big data? As we watch the world rapidly change around us with decisions being based on gut rather than facts, I find myself questioning the intelligence of humanity and its readiness to make sense of big data.

Doing Agile in small pockets is relatively easy to kick off and make work - the real challenge is doing this at scale. Just like waterfall project delivery, there are significant challenges in ensuring alignment and the right focus when you have multiple initiatives running simultaneously with cross dependencies, impacting the same users and systems, all calling out for funding.

To get the full benefits of Agile you need multifunctional teams and to be organised around products. These require fundamental organisation redesign. Companies who choose to ignore or water down this fact will always struggle to realise the full benefits of Agile.

The most popular and proven method of kick starting your adoption of Agile into your organisation is to start with a pilot project, see how it works for you (and where it doesn't), and to then scale out from there.

There’s a big push currently (notably from the likes of Gartner) for IT departments to create a bi-modal capability. This dual-mode of operating is in response to the digital shift we’ve seen in recent years which has repositioned the role of IT in the organisation.