Agile Virus

Difficult times demand creative solutions compatible in courage and steadfastness with the speed and the extent of the damage caused by Covid-19. Although we all want to optimize the ratio between health preservation and economic recovery, it seems to me that there is an almost general consensus that health comes first. The so-called “lockdown” and testing of the population has proved to be an arduous but necessary strategy.

Despite of that, the announced tragedy in economy unfortunately promises to be severe, inexorable and ubiquitous for everyone. Obviously, those with less resources tend to suffer even more. They are those individuals or companies with reduced financial breath, with less reserve and working capital. Typically, small and medium businesses, in addition to self-employed professionals and informal workers. This may be the main target audience for this article, even though its abstractions are valid and applicable proposals to all kinds of organizations.

There is no free lunch and recovery will be costly and laborious. It will require a lot of effort, planning and hard work. At this point, I believe that the values of the Agile Manifesto can and should be remembered, not as fixed and rigid reference, but as the genesis of a new and bold way of doing business.

Individuals and their interactions remain the most important perspectives, but with the required social isolation, we have come to value our relationships even more. The need to develop effective communication plans with all the organization's stakeholders forces us to rethink business strategies, in addition to new possibilities for products and services. All of this considering the current context and the reality of restricted living that we are going through. We can consider all of that as a melancholic and architectural disadvantage or as new way to reach customers through technology. There are several different platforms, social networks, among other resources that can be converted into excellent alternatives for maintaining and winning new customers, which more than ever should be at the center of our effective dedication.

It seems a contradiction to talk about working products, given that both supply and world demand have decreased absurdly. The virus does not respect bureaucracy and spreads at its own pace. However, as we all know, major crises can also become interesting opportunities, as we have seen through the growth of different services mediated by technology such as payments, education, deliveries, among others. Even more important, new ways must be found to continue to produce, test and measure the impact of these innovative solutions for delivering value. And then to continue unceasingly in this cycle until new strategies of attraction and penetration are confirmed. It is not the time to belittle creative ideas, but to test them, shamelessly, with frequent communication and without losing sight of quality.

Collaboration has never been more important. We are living in a perfect time to break once and for all undesirable customer-supplier dichotomies. The virus came exactly to ratify that we are all in the same boat facing one of the most difficult and complex phases of our history, with impacts that go far beyond the financial crisis of 2008. The only way out is for us to help each other. In some cases, solidarity is a matter of survival and cannot be ignored. It is time to negotiate with customers, but also with suppliers, partners, employees, everybody involved. All in an extremely transparent and sustainable way, with the best style of agile practices, but exchanging the old mentality of the search for culprits for a posture of greater complicity between the parties involved. Either we follow this path truly and effectively, or we run the risk of remaining static and blocked in an anachronistic paradigm, which has no logic nor justification in the dynamic market of this century, even more under de aegis of coronavirus.

Last but not least, our ability to respond to changes is being tested in an extremely aggressive manner. It’s in difficult times that we separate the chaff from the wheat, that we seek strength in our resilience to transform creativity into innovation. Always with responsibility, but also with the certainty that if we do not have the courage to take risks and innovate, we will always do more of the same, which is the antithesis of a time that definitely does not forgive stagnation and cry out for efficiency and originality.

Quoting philosopher Slavoj ?i?ek, “Beyond the fiction of reality, there is the reality of the fiction”. Behold, we were caught by this fiction that became the reality of coronavirus in our lives. But we can try to avoid experiencing an economic dystopia, if we manage to take advantage of this evolution of forced maturity that the virus is imposing to us. The values of the Agile Manifesto are just a suggestion of a starting point. The arrival, depends on each one of us as professionals and human beings. That's our main challenge.