Whether your organization specializes in designing airplanes, conducting focused research, developing software, analyzing data, or something entirely different, you often work on complex activities with an aim to attain concrete outcomes… ultimately to provide some sort of value to your customers as you stay ahead of your competition.
In the course of doing so, you will have very likely seen that managing timing, minimizing risks, and optimizing investments and costs is essential as you work to glean and meet the real needs of your customers. And to be able to do this optimally, you need to be timely, collaborate well, and have the ability to pivot and change direction when there is a need. In essence, you need to be Agile.
Agile is an umbrella term that covers values, principles, practices and frameworks that enable responsiveness to change, minimizing risks, optimizing investments and/or continuous improvement, with an ultimate focus on maximizing the value delivered to customers.
While some of the practices under the umbrella of Agile can trace their roots back to the '70s and '80s, it truly gained prominence in the last couple of decades, after the creation of the “Manifesto for Agile Software Development”. And despite the Manifesto’s focus on software, most – if not all – of its values and principles (with some slight tweaks) remain relevant and applicable no matter the industry – finance, manufacturing, healthcare, education… you name it.
Let’s have a look at the slightly tweaked Agile values:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Concrete outcomes over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
Can you relate to these values bearing in mind the work that you do, or what your customers might get out of it? As you mull over them and what benefits they might bring to you, your organization and your customers, note that the clarification towards the end is particularly crucial, as only following the items on the left can lead to complete and utter chaos.
When applying the values, you can strengthen the advantages and avoid most of the commonly faced dysfunctions through a set of principles laid out in the Manifesto.
Highlighting three principles in particular:
Simplicity – the art of maximizing the amount of work not done – is essential.
Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.
At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
Connecting back to the complex activities we started with, Agile values and principles can bring a number of benefits when weaved into your ways of working. Give some thought to how might apply these principles to your day-to-day work, the areas of your organization that you interact with, and what your customers need.
On the other hand, it’s best to keep in mind that Agile is neither a silver bullet nor panacea for all ills.
The Stacey Matrix, which maps the degree of agreement against the degree of certainty in the course of work, is a good indicator for understanding when it’s best to use Agile. Let’s work through a process of elimination with some examples.
Stacey Matrix, with examples
Simple: Setting chatbots aside for a moment, while there’s an exceedingly high volume of calls to an established call center, the majority of them can be dealt with by following Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). For 99% of the work, aside from perhaps improving the SOPs, Agile won’t help.
Complicated, with some uncertainty: Building a specific model of passenger aircraft comes with a need for detailed planning to deal with tight tolerances, thousands of parts, a ton of dependencies and more, with a supply chain that spans many countries. Not quite a fit for Agile.
Complicated, with a lack of agreement: Negotiating or planning the pricing of a product when entering a new market might depend on a dozen factors spanning competition, taxes, regulations, the season, discounts and more. Again, not quite a fit for Agile.
Chaos: Not knowing who the customer is, nor knowing what the requirements are at all. Once more, not quite a fit for Agile.
What’s left is the Complex zone, where you may have at least a vague idea of who your customer is and what their needs are. With that as a high-level goal or North Star, no matter whether there’s limited agreement or certainty, Agile can generally help you with a way forward.
There are dozens of Agile practices and frameworks, Scrum and Kanban being the most well-known, which can be leveraged depending on your needs and the needs of your organization and your customers.
So, circling back, whether your organization specializes in designing airplanes, conducting focused research, developing software, analyzing data, or something entirely different, Agile can bring a you and your organization a plethora of benefits if you use it right!
It’s best to start simple, with a focus on the values and principles, and then scale up, rather than immediately starting on an Agile transformation. Keep in mind that Agile is the journey, not the destination. Figure out what you want to achieve – a faster time-to-market, better quality, improved customer satisfaction, etc., and then use the most suitable Agile practice or framework to make it happen.
Connect with our experts to set up a workshop that suits your needs.
Commentaires