The hype has been on for years and although the frustrations of continued dropped cell calls  haunts us all, the future has arrived in full swing….pardon the pun!!! I thought this article between “Mad Money Cramer” and MLB is a fantastic illustration of a dream unfolding before everyone’s eyes.

This month has been a time to reflect upon the historic moment 40 years ago of man’s first walk on the moon.  I am sure just about everyone can remember where they were when the first televised pictures captivated the world.  For the legions of people that made that historic event a reality, they undoubtedly felt they  were living on the bleeding edge of technology with as many known’s as unknowns. But for the rest of us, it was a completely controlled event.  One we marveled at but did not participate in. One we were all touched by, but could not touch.

Contrast that event to what is transpiring today. We are in the midst of an “explosion of the mobile Internet”, but it hasn’t arrive with a single defining moment.  It has crept up on us virally, gradually becoming more pervasive and entrenching itself in our daily lives.  Even trying to quantify the market potential is difficult to predict, as Cramer exemplifies  - “Until you see these applications, you don’t understand how this thing is going to take over the world. It’s the definition of why I value the Mobile Internet as the biggest investable trend I’ve ever seen.”

There was a time when many of us tech-maniacs would hear from our significant other “are you ever going to put that damn thing down”  referring to our iPhone or Blackberry.  Now I for one watch in stunned silence as my kids and significant other are constantly glued to either their iPhone or Blackberry.  What was once the exclusive domain of the workaholic, semi-obsessed information junkie,  has become the “always connected” device of…well everyone I know.  It is no longer a “work device”  it is “my device.”

The transformation was fairly seamless and uneventful except for one subtle difference….one by one we are all participating in this event…not just witnessing it. Experts in the varied  fields of human behavior must be licking their chops as this new era spreads across humanity like the rising sun across the horizon.

The world has changed and I sometimes wonder if we now have “a new world disorder.”  A world where snippets of information are all anyone has time or interest in, a world where one on one communication is not the norm, a world where if we are not connected we are not comfortable.

Somehow it all seemed more managed when it was a “work device” as opposed to “my device.”  Time will tell how far out in front the “explosive mobile internet” progress is over the process necessary to support it.

I sat in on an iteration review this week and came away feeling great about the team, the process and the strategic direction we taking our products.  Reflecting on the meeting I asked myself what was the magic in the meeting? The strategic direction of the product had been hashed out months ago in a grueling multi day session,  almost all of the members of the development team that were present for the review have been with the company since it’s inception back in 2001  and the meeting covered what it was billed to cover –  there was no “ oh by the way we got this new cool feature into this iteration.”

The magic of the meeting was in what I will call  “The Unspoken Agile Advantage.”  We are working towards our next major product release with 2 week iterations.  We are coming up on the end of an iteration and the team got together to review a demo of a very significant new feature. I sat in unannounced to see our progress first hand.  The demo was solid and it was one of those good news – no surprise meetings.

So what is this magic I keep referring to?  The chemistry of the team’s interaction.  In short order, major new functionality was designed and brought to life.  The team could see the results with very fast turnaround –  2 weeks, while it was still fresh in their minds.  The Agile process lends itself perfectly to “very cool, hey can we do this now” or what about changing that adjacent part of the screen to better expose these capabilities….and on and on.”  The magic was in the rapid review, the visual context of the new functionality in relation to the rest of the product and the dynamic interaction of cause and effect of the new capabilities – all centered around making the overall user experience even better than “the plans on paper.”

I am sure every Agile Evangelist would look at me and say duh…yeah that is what Agile is all about.  As a CEO it is one thing to hear we are on track with the new release and be shown multi-colored spreadsheet or dashboards,  but it is worth its weight in gold to actually see the progress maturing and the ensuing feeding frenzy of ideas amongst the development management and team members in quick iteration bursts.

As software managers you’re undoubtedly being asked to do more with less in this economy. With companies continuously being forced to cut costs, the first shoe to drop is when you are told you need to cut headcount.

The second shoe drops the day after the painful deed is done and you look into the eyes of the team members that are left behind and try to put a positive spin on your world – their world. And that is when reality really hits home.  Less people, same number of problems.  No one “downsized” the backlog of customer requests, the bugs, the schedule expectations or the previous team’s workload.

At this point two groups form; the group of managers that simply puts their head down and grinds it out until things turn around (hoping things don’t get worse…which is really a do nothing strategy and those rarely work)…or the group that decides to be bold and innovative.  The natural inclination is to say the latter approach is too risky but in reality it is actually less risky, just more visible and more likely to be positively received by your team and your management.

The dev organizations best positioned to come out of this economic downturn stronger, are the ones with dev leaders that are focused on how to do things differently.  Agile development and further process automation with advanced tools become the mechanism to strongly position these dev teams for the better days ahead.  Why? Because just like every bubble, every downturn eventually ends.  As a dev manager, your real focus needs to be on what you want your team and your company to look like coming out of the downturn – heads down, battered and bruised but glad to be alive -  or lean and mean supported by a finely automated dev infrastructure and ready to capitalize on new opportunities.

By focusing on new approaches and automation, you  are helping your team feel they can get in front of the workload they have been presented with during these very challenging economic times. Automation is critical.  Tools such as continuous integration, refactoring, and code analysis all help eliminate wasteful, demoralizing “redo’s” of stupid mistakes they probably would not have made if they were not so maxed out, or if they were more familiar with the latest project you had no choice but to drop on their lap.  They see a way to spend more time on interesting, and challenging, innovation rather than just constant debugging.

“Hunker down” seems to be the mantra of our times, but “hunker down smart” and you and your team will be more readily positioned for the better days ahead.