What does Agile really mean?

In 2001, a group of 17 software developers met in Snowbird,?Utah USA to exchange ideas and relax. In the course of their discourse, they came up with a set of philosophies that was summarized into 4 values which was captured into the Agile Manifesto and these values kick-started what has become the Agile movement. However, when a concept or idea becomes popular, people use it to justify whatever they are trying to do irrespective of whether there is an alignment or not, and therefore at a point it begins to mean everything and nothing. The purpose of this write-up is to simplify what Agile means to someone without an IT background and help individuals and organizations who are interested in increasing their organization’s agility understand how they can start to apply the principles of Agile and be sure of what their objectives should look like.

Background

Historically, software developers have faced huge challenges in the areas of managing customer relationships vis-à-vis delivering value. Unlike a building a house, the business problem a typical software is created to address tends to change all the time. So what typically happens is that before an application is completed, the business need it was originally developed to address has either changed or is no more in existence. This leads to a friction between software development teams and business leaders. Business leaders know their software development teams have the potential to give them real competitive advantage in the market place but often complain that it takes too long to get anything worthwhile out of their teams meanwhile software development teams complained that the business doesn’t give them all the information they need on time for them to develop what the business needs. The Agile Manifesto gave both parties a way to reconcile these two competing points of view by describing what should be prioritized. The later addition of the 12 Agile Manifesto principles created a guide for how software developers on one hand can accelerate the rate of creating applications that meets the needs of the business on one hand and how the business leaders can protect the software teams from distraction as well as give them the information they need to build applications that create value for the organization. With this understanding, one can begin to understand why the Agile Manifesto has such a huge impact on organizations. Since the release of the Agile Manifesto, an Agile movement was born and it has grown in leaps and bounds.

Evolution of Agile

As the adoption of the values enumerated in the Manifesto increased, organizations and individuals saw opportunities to expand the values and apply them within non-IT contexts. From studies, 3 key perspectives of Agile have emerged:

??Agile as?a Culture

??Agile as a Practice

??Agile as a Process

Agile as culture

An agile culture is an organizational environment that is underpinned by certain core values, behaviors and practices that enable all levels of the organization to quickly and effectively adapt to internal and external changes.?In an organization that is culturally agile, uncertainty is embraced and the organization is adaptive, flexible and innovative. According to the Agile Business Consortium, the core values espoused by an agile culture include innovation and learning, collaboration and autonomy, inspiring leadership and a shared collective purpose.

Agile as a Practice

Agile practices are techniques practiced by an agile team or unit. These techniques are common across the different agile methodologies/processes and are mostly invented or promoted by Agile practitioners. Some of the practices are collective code ownership, pair-programming, daily stand-ups, use of specializing generalists, iterative development and so on.

Many leaders think that by embracing these practices their organization becomes agile. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Practicing these techniques may help you churn out products quickly but the true test of agility is when the organization can adapt to change quickly. Until that is done, the organization is not yet to be culturally agile.

Agile as a Process

Agile as a process speaks to the various frameworks and methodologies promoted by Agilists such as Scrum, Kanban Development, Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM), Feature Driven Development (FDD) and so on

These methodologies have specific steps, ceremonies and activities that are associated with them. Each one has its pros and cons and I typically suggest that leaders at various levels of the organization get to have at least a basic understanding of each methodology.?

Agile as a process is usually where most companies begin their experience with Agile. However, studies show that organizations typically run into a clash of cultures when they try to embrace agile methods without first creating an enabling cultural environment for it.

?How to start your Agile journey

With the understanding of what Agile is now, the next question is where you or your start from? In response, I will say first get your leaders and employees trained on Agile so that you will speak the same language and be able to clearly set expectations. We offer a 3-day Agile Certified Practitioner course that walks you through the various aspects of being Agile. This course is framework agonistic and it really equips you and members of your organization for what you need to adopt Agile and create a culture that supports it. Our training also prepares you for the PMI-ACP certification course by the Project Management Institute. Contact us for more information.

Secondly, once you have yourself and your people trained, you need to assess where your organization is. Do you have people using some Agile practices like daily stand up meetings, pair programming and so on within the organization? Has a unit adopted a methodology/framework within the organization? What benefits are they creating already? Can it be scaled? What are the hindrances to scaling it? You can only be able to determine all these by carrying out an assessment. If no one is using a methodology or practice. Then you will have to look for opportunities to introduce some Agile practices. I will recommend that you use the #Discipline Agile (DA)# toolkit to know how to introduce Agile practices into your organization. The Disciplined Agile toolkit is like an toolbox for Agile that helps you pick where you want to start from and how you want to proceed as an organization. One of the major benefits of using the DA toolkit is that when using it, the team is fully aware of why they are making the decisions and the options open to them. Most frameworks are usually focused on only a few options. Contact us for more information.

Conclusion

In today’s world, every organization needs to be agile however, leaders have to be clear about what they mean when they want their organization to be agile. Are they adopting agile methods or are they driving towards an agile culture. Each has a way to go about it and lack of clarity at this level leads to frustration across and along the organization.?