Agile wisdom Shots #3, "? Agile for Non-IT Companies, Is it a difficult pill to swallow?"

? Agile for Non-IT Companies, Is it a difficult pill to swallow?

Agile is a framework for developing iterative and incremental products, it provides and encourages flexibility to address rapidly changing requirements. Agile has gained popularity and predominantly software companies have adopted to agile from existing waterfall methodology. Lot of companies have benefitted by agile adoption. Agile has gained more popularity and adoption in IT, but the principles values, beliefs of Agility are applicable everywhere. Most practices like Kanban haven’t originated from software industry. A lot of organisations improved their flexibility to adapt to change demanded by the market and the speed of delivery demanded by business when they adopted Agile.

Kanban originated from Japanese word with literal meaning Sign or Sign board or “card you see” Kanban serves a visual cue to prompt the team on the action needed to keep the process flowing without any interruption This process was inspired when Toyota was studying a supermarket in UK. This System was developed for Toyota by Taiichi Ohno Industrial engineer to have self-stocking factory floor Just in time Raw materials in the production line to improve the manufacturing efficiency.

Applying agile methodology to bring in value to the business, If you are new team that wants to adopt to agile mindset you will encounter a lot of resistance to this change by the team members, to overcome this resistance we should study their current practice identify gaps and demonstrate them the value agile and agile mindset can deliver to their teams. In any company can get?benefited?with agile which can help improve value of its products

Agile helps in industries adapting to quick change in development considering the feedback of the customer end user, have release of small increments and Iterative manner.?When you look at agile manifesto

·??????Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

·??????Working software over comprehensive documentation

·??????Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

·??????Responding to change over following the plan

You will see the left side the agile principle (bold) add more value over the right which is conventional way of working when we look at the point 2 “Working software over comprehensive documentation”,?As Agile foster?change We can adapt it as generic industry version as “Usable Working Product over comprehensive documentation” An Usable working product is one which delivers value to the end user or your customer. As we do in Agile software development, we need to come up with common understanding at an early stage on what has to be considered as basic building block at each stage of delivery which aligned with your final usable working product.

To avoid unduly putting off the existing team, don’t introduce or prescribe agile as set of process that must followed. The best approach is to frame Agile as a culture and practice most important is cultivating the mindset of approaching work non-IT teams would have specific requirements that can’t be easily met with instant prescription and adoption of agile. However, in few iterations there are few elements in agile that will help you in advancing in your existing workflow and the team moves towards the Agile culture. Yes, Agile transformation is all about culture that happens organically, It’s a iterative approach of building an environment for teams to focus and take responsibility of bringing the outcome, unlike traditional environment where management shoulders the responsibility of success and failure of the strategy and the team ends up working on the output.

Agile perceptions & its Resistance

When we are working on Agile Transformation initiatives opposition & resistance tends to come from Quality, Finance, Regulatory and Compliance departments/ units. This is due to their lack of understanding of Agile and its principles. Agile doesn’t compromise on quality, compliance, regulations, and the budget rather it helps you in adherence and adoption, it also supports you without letting the team get bogged down by the process and bureaucracy.

Considerations for comfort

You should consider changing the terminologies in agile to reflect the terms / words your team feels comfortable. When it’s a sales team can rename/ term the task and stories as prospect/ leads / customers and the marketing team can call their campaign as its feature. Teams tends to be valuable and more productive when they have high autonomy and an environment where they can leverage their strengths. When we don’t create framework that creates organisation wide alignment, we will have multiple teams practicing agile with lack cross team or departmental coordination then we end up at the risk of creating Agile Silos which challenges the unified vision and collaboration. This happens when we make the teams adopting to ceremonies without understanding its purpose. Don’t try to over synchronise the process and ceremonies that your team doesn’t need.

Strength of agile & Scale

The greatest strength of Agile is it flexibility and simplicity Hence agile is not just a methodology for software domain. It makes sense then; it can be applied to other industries. There are multiple frameworks (eg:, SAFe ) which can help your workflow and processes in scaling agile across the organisation at different stage.

Palatable agile practices, helping all organisations

Your non-IT Team can adapt and use the following key agile practices from the agile manifesto, will help

1.??????Create a list of prioritised items to be worked by the team, This will help your team to decide, pick and work on items (Backlog)

2.??????Write short descriptions in few sentences about the work that needs to be done (User stories)

3.??????Write a note on how to understand that the work meets the criteria and is completed (Definition of Done)

4.??????Set a period of 2-4 weeks to complete the work (Sprint)

5.??????Select Items of work from the list that can be completed within the period (Sprint backlog)

6.??????Use a board with categories of “To do”, “In progress” & “Done” Displayed vertically where items move from left to right when work progresses. Team can select stories from “To do” (left column), and when they start working it can be moved to “In progress” (left to right middle column ), when the work completed and meets the criteria it is moved to “Done”(?right column) (Sprint board)

7.??????Team can also have a “On hold “category too to park items which they have started working but stopped now

8.??????Each team has 6-8 Members to work on (Agile team)

9.??????Have 10-15 mins of meeting at a same place where the team assembles to discuss about the progress, challenges and seek solutions, each team member is given an opportunity to speak on his progress challenges and help needed (Daily stand-up)

10.??Once the work is completed that’s presented to stakeholders for their feedback (Sprint Review)

11.??The team after completion of work and review meets to discuss on what went well, what didn’t go well and what lessons can be learned from this period to help the team on their future work. (Retrospective)

Who can benefit from agile ? ?

The following can benefit from agile

·??????changing objectives or which evolving scope or which has lack of clarity at the start.

·???????needs act and work on frequent customer interaction and feedback

·??????Needs continuous improvement and innovation

·??????Demands working together closely with lot of interdependent tasks and teams

·??????Build iteratively and act on feedback during development

Remember the objective is to iterate and come up with their own framework which will help their team to interact, communicate and collaborate more. These elements in agile that will help teams advancing towards the Agile culture. Multiple iterations and retrospectives will definitely help in the progress.

Before ? Agile

Don’t start prescribing agile even before asking to yourself these question

1. what do we want to achieve?
2. Understand what the organisation needs?
3. Validate the possibility, will agile adoption address both ?.

Be aware that if you want your teams to the agile pill prescribed, you will need them coached to be prepared for handling their objections (side effects) and manage the risks (contra indication), ?The company gets rewarded growing a culture by the team with agile mindset .