Why agile is now more important than ever.

Agile as a concept has been around since the early 2000's and although its prolific across the tech communities its struggled to make its way across the enterprise being seen somewhat of a 'techie' thing thats just for developers, product owners and those directly involved in software development.

But, as a concept agile should be as applicable to HR, Finance, Marketing and in fact all other depts as it is to Technology. I'll go into explaining why I think this is and the implications, but first its important to understand the history.

Where did 'Agile' come from as a methodology:

The background and roots of Agile as a methodology date back to 2001 when the Agile manifesto was created by a group of software developers:

• Individuals and interactions – over processes and tools
• Working software – over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration – over contract negotiation
• Responding to change – over following a plan

So why hasn't agile been adopted by all? A few misconceptions about Agile

1. Its not as simple as it seems - Although the agile manifesto is very simple, putting these principles into practice is anything but, especially when dealing with multi-national enterprise scale organisations.
2. Culture clash - Agile principles work brilliantly where there are small tight-knit communities who know their accountabilities well and communicate succinctly and often, the complete opposite of most BIG businesses which operate with high levels of ambiguity, have complex structures and where its hard to communicate with everyone, especially so when coordinating across depts.
3. Rigour of regulation - Favouring working software over documentation just doesn't hold water when in highly regulated industries like Healthcare, Banking or Life Sciences. Everything must be documented to remain compliant and this impacts how agile teams work.
4. Misunderstanding about what Agile is - I'm sure you've all been involved in examples where individuals assume agile just means 'winging it', no plans, no structure and just seeing how it goes... Obviously not true at all, but a very common misconception.
5. Change is tough - Given its roots Agile is seen as a methodology for those in IT/Tech only. Tech teams have been working in agile for years so for most its very familiar and teams have re-organised to make agile work. Agile teams self-organise around opportunities or customer problems and

What about agile works well?

My experience is exclusively in large scale multi-national organisations who are transitioning from more traditional project based roles to much more agile focussed organisations.

In all these organisations I focussed my time on the principles rather than the details / rituals or specifics of any agile framework. (Emergn's VFQ (Value, Flow, Quality)) approach to this is particularly useful for any big organisation going on such a journey.

1. Focus on delivery of Value - Rather than having big monolithic programmes of work, spend time clearly defining the problem and hypothesising solutions. Then define experiments which could help solve these problems and scale from there. However, be sure to stop when you feel you've delivered sufficiently as its often the last 20% of value that takes the most effort to deliver.
2. Flow of work through the organisation - You could have the best and most agile software development team in the world but if the organisation around them isn't supportive and working similarly it wont work. So focus must be on the organisation as a whole and how work goes from an idea to value delivered.
3. Quality of the work being done - There is no use delivering quickly if the work has to be re-done. In complex highly regulated organisations this can often mean creating the documentation once software is live.

Why is agile so important now?

Agile teams in Tech/IT are great, but the real benefits come when the whole organisations moves to agile ways of working. Institutional agility is much more than having agile teams, its about the culture, structure and vision of the organisation. This is what companies like Amazon, Microsoft etc have really got right. At the heart of this is absolute clarity on the mission and purpose for the organisation

The C-suite also need to be fully bought into making this institutional agility a reality. Forbes cites this as 'creating a hierarchy of competence rather than a bureaucratic hierarchy of authority where decisions rely on the chain of command and power trickles downward' and you can see this coming through in organisations strategies like Novartis and their 'unbossed' initiative which moves them away from a very hierarchical structure.

As the pace of Digital transformation picks up even further and the uncertainty and ambiguity left from COVID19 continues its critical for businesses to be able to rapidly adapt, reshape and identify new opportunities to deliver value for their customers, being an 'agile' business just means this is pace, efficiency and focus is baked into organisational DNA, and will ultimately make change and adaption to new working landscape much quicker and easier.

Outcomes / benefits of being an agile organisation

• Nimble & able to change direction quickly - Removal of organisational 'treacle' will allow your teams to make decisions quicker and focus more on delivery of value to customers rather than pushing work through inefficient systems. In such changing and uncertain times this is more important than ever.
• Customer centric - Agile principles focus teams on what customers 'really' need and break these needs down into small bite-sized chunks which are easier to deliver incrementally. Customers are involved throughout the delivery process so you can be sure you're delivering what really matters.
• Technology & data enabled - All businesses these days are dependent on some level of technology and digital, even more so in a post COVID19 world where many teams will stick to remote working and businesses will increasingly seek to do more business online.

So, why haven't organisations embraced agile across all depts?

Agile has always been seen as a Tech/IT initiative and has a certain stigma attached to it. CIO's / CTO's / CDO's need to do a better job demonstrating its value to leaders of other depts. Its helpful that it can now be evidenced through examples like Microsoft.

Rebranding 'Agile' to address this issue is a good opportunity, in many cases the underlying principles of the manifesto have been made more complex to align better to technical teams and this has alienated the business community.

Going back to basics would help address this and we're seeing examples of this come through with companies like Novatis and their focus on Unbossed'.

Overall, I think there is a huge opportunities to embrace Agile principles and get benefit, the only challenge is re-positioning, gaining buy-in and moving everyone to work differently... No mean feat, but with accelerated change and uncertainty continuing there are lots of opportunities for those who are able to adapt, change and maximise opportunities.

Sources

Accenture: Agile Environments - https://www.solutionsiq.com/resource/blog-post/what-is-an-agile-environment/

BCS: The uncomfortable truth about agile - https://www.bcs.org/content-hub/the-uncomfortable-truth-about-agile/

Emergn - Value Flow Quality - https://www.emergn.com/advancing-business-capability/

Forbes: Agile isn't new https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2020/05/03/agile-isnt-new-whats-new-is-c-suite-embracing-it/#3c3bc0e45e5e

CNBC - Novartis wants to unboss https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/29/why-novartis-ceo-wants-to-unboss-companies.html