Is Agile all just hype?

“We are an agile organisation.” “We use Lean Startup”. “We adhere to Design Thinking principles.” I am certain that you have come across these sentiments more than once in the past year or two, perhaps you’ve even uttered those words yourself. But to the majority of people, they sound simply like the shiniest, newest buzzwords to leap into workplaces everywhere, across almost every industry. You might be asking yourself, is it all just simply hype?

The fact of the matter is every single industry is being disrupted at a pace never before experienced in the industrial age. Traditional methods of production-process work, and waterfall project management, no longer cut the mustard. Many well-established companies have a hierarchical structure that is simply not able to effectively and efficiently manage the challenges in this current age of complexity.

Survival is the primary reason why organisations, both large and small, are eager to adopt these new working methods and integrate them across every department and team within the organisation. From SWARM, to scrum, to pods, to pivoting – companies the world over are lapping up these ways of working at a frenetic speed.

And frenetic is a word I have deliberately used. It denotes a sense of being frantic, desperate, and harried. What I want to implore in this article is for all leaders and managers to remain aware and strong, and assess the situation before full implementation. Like a captain steering a ship through choppy waters, navigating the array of new working methods can be easier when a leader acknowledges these three crucial points:

1.    Assess fit and sustainability for your organisation.

What are the needs and requirements of your business to achieve success today? How disrupted is the industry you operate in? How complex are the projects you are working on, and the products or services you are developing? These are the questions that need to be clearly answered before launching full-scale into the latest new working method, or methods. For example, working Agile is best suited when dealing with unknown, complex, and novel project undertakings. Lean Startup, like its namesake, works best when organisations want to launch an innovation as quickly and ‘leanly’ as possible. And DevOps is perfect for large-scale application and service builds – fusing development and operations in a way that increases speed to market. It’s critical for organisations to first understand their objectives and goals, and then apply the working method that best helps get them where they need to be.

2.    Start small, test and learn.

Let’s say you’re a senior leader who has attended a Design Thinking workshop. You’re inspired, you’re excited. You’re simply itching to get this mindset and methodology off the ground in your workplace or department. You have big plans to overhaul existing processes and try to wedge the Design Thinking cycle into your work. But after two months, it fails. It’s all too much. People are not buying into it. Looking back, you realise that smaller steps could have led to greater change. Maybe the Design Thinking cycle couldn’t replace the existing core process of your business at the outset – but many of Design Thinking’s principles could have been ‘hacked’ into smaller everyday practices in your workplace instead. Like inviting customers into the development process. Or leaving judgement at the door in meetings. Or thinking of solutions that are centred around people first. My point is that sometimes smaller scale adoption of a new working method can be more effective in the long-term than going at full throttle from the start.

3.    Create a supportive and open culture.

No new working method has a chance to be adopted unless the people within the organisation are well-equipped. This starts all the way at the top in the C-suite, and spreads across every level and team in the business. Firstly, there needs to be a full understanding of what the new working method actually is. Let’s take Agile as an example. Most people would have a sense of what an Agile organisation is – however true Agile integration can only take place when everybody actually comprehends its meaning. This means providing ample opportunities to communicate its meaning to all employees, allowing people to ask questions without judgment (and responding promptly), and offering support structures when it’s required. Secondly, it’s about fostering learning. Providing accessible and highly interactive education on how this new method functions, how teams are organised, and how it can be implemented. Companies must invest in high-quality standards of training to ensure that everyone systematically learns. And finally, people must be able to practice the new working method in an environment where it’s ok to make mistakes. Putting the method into motion sans perfection must be encouraged by leaders. The fundamental success factor will always be try out, fail, try again, while constantly improving.

Have you begun working in a new way in your own place of work? What was your experience? What were the biggest roadblocks? What was the key ingredient that made it work? I’d love to hear your experiences in the comments on this update.

Thank you,

Sabine Scheunert