Xebia In Tech Journal Feb 2010; Xebia has talked about Agile development methods.

1. TechJournal : Face 2 Face
Vikas Hazrati
In conversation with Vikas Hazrati, Director-Technology, Xebia India…
Q. Brief us on the origin of Xebia. What were the initial objectives of the company?
Ans. Xebia was founded in The Netherlands in 2001. The initial objectives of the company were to
provide high value consulting and audit services around IT
architecture.
Q. Tell us about the new products and solutions at Xebia.
Ans. Xebia is offering Agile and Open source transformation
services in the Indian market that enable big enterprises to
significantly cut down the waste in the software
development process and save money by using high quality
open source software to run enterprise business.
Q. Tell us about the agile development methods.
Ans. There are several Agile Software Development
methods but Xebia primarily uses Scrum and Extreme
Programming methods. The origin of Agile software
development lies in Toyota Production System and Lean movement. In the mid 90’s, Agile software
movement started, which has got the present name since the signing of Agile Manifesto in 2001.
Agile methods encourage iterative software development and frequent software delivery. There is a
strong emphasis on building high quality software rather than heavy documentation. Microsoft, Google
and Yahoo are among the early adopters among the software companies that practice Agile, however,
now Agile is being adopted by the big corporations like British Telecom and Ericsson, who have been
enterprise IT customers.
Q. Several large enterprises have migrated to JBoss environment. Share your reason behind this.
Ans. Migration to JBoss makes sense because JBoss provides high quality open source application
infrastructure to run enterprise applications at a significantly lower costs. As the IT budgets come under
pressure, several CIOs in the enterprises are critically looking at the expensive licensing model of
vendors, such as IBM and Oracle, and considering subscription model offered by Redhat. It gives
enterprises right to unlimited JBoss product updates and enterprise class service and support.
Q. Xebia has been proactive in spreading awareness about agile methodology in India. How has been
the response within the country?
Ans. The response has been mixed so far in India. While a large section of offshore software
development industry has shown very keen interest in Agile, the lack of awareness among senior
managers remains a major hurdle in adoption. Offshore software industry is driven by the demand of
overseas customers, so when an overseas customer prescribes Agile as the way to work then it is taken
seriously, but not proactively as the way to improve the software quality and cut down the waste.
TechJournal.in | February 14, 2010 A RKTS Technologies Initiative

2. TechJournal : Face 2 Face
Vikas Hazrati
The story in the domestic software industry is very different where still the software development
methods of 70’s and 80’s prevail. While it took west 50 years and lots of wasted dollars to find better
ways to develop software, we do not have to wait that long and waste money by using software
development methods that have consistently failed to deliver in the past. Banks, insurance companies,
telecom companies and other industries relying upon software solutions in India, should come forward
to learn and to get benefitted from Agile.
Q. How effective events like ‘Agile Mumbai 2010’ are in spreading awareness on the product?
Ans. These events offer a great knowledge sharing platform about Agile, which is not driven by the
commercial interests. We witnessed last year in Agile NCR 2009 and now in Agile Mumbai 2010 that
speakers from India and abroad share their practical experiences. Such a healthy exchange of knowledge
benefits everybody by raising the awareness in the industry and taking the software development to the
next level of maturity. We can proudly say that in India we are discussing the same topics as they do in
Mountian View or in Boston, nowadays.
Q. What next should expect from Xebia?
Ans. Xebia is committed to improve software development process with the help of Agile methodology.
We will be among the frontrunners to adopt the latest software development practices that work and
deliver greater value to our customers and help the industry to deliver better software.
Xebia is now working upon “Software Craftmanship Program” which is another ambitious project to
turn new comers in the software industry in to a pro, who write the best quality software that can
withstand any kind of scrutiny.
Xebia is also planning to conduct Agile NCR 2010 which will be the third edition of Agile Conference in
New Delhi region.
TechJournal.in | February 14, 2010 A RKTS Technologies Initiative