Case Studies

The patterns in this book were drawn from empirical studies of about a hundred organizations in dozens of companies in several countries around the world. To bring the patterns more down to earth, this chapter looks at two actual case studies of organizations we have worked with.

The first organization is Borland Quattro Pro for Windows. Much has already been published in the literature about this study; we include the same information here for convenience and completeness.

The second organization is a project in Lucent Technologies called SNAP. It is probably the second most productive organization we have studied.

Yes, these case studies are old in terms of Internet years. But they reflect a culture of using timeless practices. We believe that today's organizations, a few years later, would demonstrate no major departures from the practices of these organizations if they were operating at these levels of effectiveness. Furthermore, the distance of time allows us to reflect on these organizations and their practices in the context of history, rather than in the heat of the moment. Such consideration bears out the conclusions and findings. Last, we continue to find similar configurations and practices in the few high-productivity organizations we work with in the years closer to the publication of this book (200 - 2003), and find that most organizations that follow these agile practices also enjoy a level of success far above average.