AGILE VIEW – a look at COVID-19 situation from an agile perspective with Agile model and agile mindset in place.

We all know, all over world is in difficult situation due to this COVID pandemic around the world.

We all are struggling hard to deliver our best, keep the businesses running and stay safe.

The government of all countries is doing their best to fight against this deadly virus.

While I was going through the overall process model, I find the most of the processes followed resemble Agile way of working.

1.) Evolving as we move forward

First of all, the situations (cases of covid-19) in most of the countries are appearing an unpredictable manner. No one is able to define or draft the scope of the impact in any specific zone. This I relate to the model of evolving in an ongoing way, like agile requirements evolve as we move ahead. And during this time, every day there is something new.

2.) Prioritization

Secondly, the governments are prioritizing the high impact zones like red zone, yellow zone and green zone. This takes the same way, when we prioritize the requirements and focus on those high priority ones and work on them.

To take it one step ahead, let's related with the agile 4 ceremonies:

(1) Sprint Planning

We also categorize some actions as Sprint planning - where the government and related agencies are seen doing planning to work on the control of impact in those high zone areas. They plan every action with proper prioritization.

Here, the high impact zones are the priority requirements.

(2) Daily Scrum

A good example of daily Scrum is seen during the daily review sessions between the governing bodies. The related bodies are doing daily meetings and during these meetings the teams are sharing the progress or roadblocks or impediments in their scope of work on the activities defined for them.

(3) Sprint Review

Every day, we see the governing bodies are doing the regular review of the situations and the steps taken to overcome the impediments.

(4) Sprint Retrospective

All the actions and decisions which are taken during a particular period of time for a particular situation are reviewed by the governing bodies.The aim is to review what went well, what went wrong and what could we do better.

Now, to relate this COVID situation & Organizations strategy with some Agile Principles:

I am an Agile practitioner and taking into consideration the current lockdown situation and work from home scenarios where teams and team members are working remotely, such situations can be related to Agile methodology which we follow in our projects delivery.

(1) Continuous delivery - despite being scattered across and working from home, teams are working towards a common shared goal. We are not located at same place but with the efficient use of some high-tech applications like Skype, Microsoft Teams etc we are still connected and working as expected.

(2) Welcome Change requirements even late in development - Due to this unpredictable situation of Covid19, almost all the companies employees are working remotely which is a sudden change in the organizational way of working, but we all are welcoming this change.

(3) Deliver something workable (as agile says deliver working software) - Even during these situations, the teams are working unitedly and collaboratively to deliver and achieve combines goals.

(4) Business people & related team (Dev teams as agile says) are working together - We are seeing a collaborative efforts of almost all the organizational teams be it sales, IT, Support, Admin, HR, Sr. management teams. And every team be it business team or related teams are working together and are connected. For example, the HR is making sure that the people are well informed and connected.

(5) Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them environment & support they need, and trust them to get the job done - This important principal is well seen these days when the organizations are being forced to trust on them for the tasks assigned to them. In other words, the organizations are strategically aligning teams to make sure that they get highly motivated teams and team members must be ready to support each other.

(6) The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation - Lets relate this by saying, even though we are scattered, we are connected and can interact face to face which is possible due to the technology supporting tools like Skype, Hangout etc.

(7) Working product (software, business processes with measurable deliverable etc) is the primary measure of progress - When the teams are working collaboratively and towards some combines goals, we as a team deliver some expected results.

(8) Agile processes promote sustainable development - Now, as we are working together, there is a shared set of tasks assigned for which the team members are responsible. Because our deliverable's are interconnected and there is inter-dependencies, we all are trying to maintain a consistent pace in our deliverable's. As a team member, I know that my team members have some dependencies on my tasks and vice-versa.

So, we try to maintain the consistency.

(9) Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility - This particular principle can be quoted to the continuous efforts of the IT help desk teams who are helping all the business units to keep going. The well designed networks and servers as backbone of the good network design. The efficient network designs which are easily scalable and operational applications which are highly elastic are the examples of technical excellence and good design that enhances agility.

(10) Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential. --This principle is well supporting the situation in a manner by showing that despite of the challenges and teams being scattered, we are able to make the delivery processes simple.

(11) The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams. - To support this principle in accordance to current situation, I would like to refer the point where we see the team members located at distinct locations, working remotely, with less of supervision from senior management, still they have learned to be self-organized and they are working collaboratively without any local supervision.

(12) At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly. - As the teams are working independently, their maturity and sincerity towards their common goal is their tool and they(teams) are performing regular tests to see if this collaboration is working fine or not. And, if by any change it's not working fine or not delivering expected results, they review, tune and adjust the delivery behavior and re-test the same. Which slowly and gradually is making them efficient as they work on the factors affecting delivery and then strategies some quick actions to overcome and make sure the smooth deliveries are happening.

Hope you have enjoyed reading this article. Thanks.

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