Agile Development, how to take the next steps needed to compete in the modern environment.

It’s time to rethink the working approach and give the people the power to innovate.

Agile systems are nothing new, in fact the idea of rejecting traditional working approaches in favour of more sporadic and fluid systems has become rather common in teams. An agile approach is the unfiltered exploration of an idea with the ability to pivot and/or full change direction based on where the exploration is going to best meet the end goal. Naturally this process sees lots of horizontal innovation as ideas are shifted and bumped around between peers on teams. However, where things become a real challenge for most firms is introducing an agile mindset at scale encompassing the whole firm within their working model. It can become a figurative minefield of bureaucratic hurdles, cultural issues, reluctant governance, and lost talent. Yet, the benefits of successful integration allow for even the biggest firms to act as nibble as start up.

For a company to embrace an agile way of working across the board it needs to have a clear starting place, rethink its operating models, define controls, understand its governance, and remember its technical capabilities.

How to start

When kicking off an agile transformation it is important to understand its impact on the three core elements of an organization: its talent, technology, and governance.

Talent is the starting point for the true adoption of an agile environment, so take it slow give them time. Importantly the biggest limitation for the rate of change being based on the human ability to adapt to drastic workplace shifts. By making incremental changes it will become easier for the talent to absorb, re integrate and fully amerce themselves into their new way of working. For people to give it their all, they must be won over, by taking things slower the talent has the time needed to take part in the cultural metamorphosis taking place.

Slowly phasing in new technologies will stop it from being overwhelming. The aim of agile technological development is to enable the greater organizational shifts in culture, governance and working systems. Leaving all parts of an organization dependent on the slowest link to adapt. New tools are built upon pre-existing ones, meaning widespread changes to all aspects of the business require the successful integration of each new tool before introducing news.

Governance is responsible for overseeing the changes to ensure a successful shift in the firm’s dynamics. Shifting from a traditional approach to agile working styles is a major undertaking. Clearly defining the proposed road map for the changes and the time frame will greatly help with the true goal, organizational alignment.

Remaking the operating model

Sweeping changes to the way an organization is run require the operating models to be looked at in a new light, its time for change.

Re assessing the way things done before and after agile changes are made can give a clearer indication as to what models are good organizationally, allowing for the bad to be removed, tweaked, and reworked. Additionally, the organization needs to be ready to give the power to the people.

Agile teams will go from needing to work within slow approval process to the teams themselves having the power to make changes. Working styles will become more sporadic as a test as go approach is adopted making new models that can capture this innovative energy vital. Moreover, progress will no longer being strictly linear, rather people become able to learn from mistakes and back track, re assess and go in different directions organically.

Leadership structures will have to be prepared to do their part and give teams the autonomy they need. Organizations must reduce their reliance on outdated power structures and having leaders take a step back from having a boots on the ground approach. They must instead give workers the freedom to be creative, stop bureaucracy from slowing things down and show a willingness from management to be part of the change.

Controls

Organizational priorities and working styles will change when undertaking an agile transformation. Ensuring a successful agile transformation takes the ability to take a new look at controls previously set in place and re-evaluate them compared to the newer goals of the business.

Controls are set in place with the aim to assert a clear standard for quality, efficacy, timeframe, and maintain cost reliability. However, in practice they act to maintain the status quo of the time in which they were implemented as well as reflect the goals and values of set point in time.

Most dated controls act as foils serving to preserve the perspective on ways of working that don’t fully grasp the potential of current technological tools. Many forms of arbitrary controls include requiring x people singe off on something, a min number of review process, benchmarking and even x min hours spent on a project. The reduced reliance and remove of outdated controls are good and a step for developing the foundation needed in agile at scale.

Governance

Governances’ role is to oversee everything, it’s the people and the systems set in place that hold the power. The key word in question is power, when it is expressed by governance it is in the form of where they allocate funding, the time that’s set aside for projects, the talent allocated and the ease at which they allow things to happen.

What is generally problematic when shifting to an agile working environment is leaderships want to resist change in an aim to maintain the status quo as to not give up their power to autonomous teams. Change drivers and the decision-making process needs to shift from only happening in a top-down manner to being accessible by any level of the organization, simply organizations wanting to become agile must adopt a horizontal change maker approach. This sees power shared and entrusted to talent in the moment with governance acting to champion good ideas.

Shifting the role of governance into caretaking the greater company vision by making sure ideas explored by the talent are in line with the aims of the leadership.

Technological underpinnings

Technology can be a driving force to usher in the changes desired for making an organization more agile in its workplace systems. As follows new tools will be needed to reflect what the firm is becoming.

In line with the changes taking place the organization can aid in the facilitation of new ways of working will need new technological tools. These tools should be based on shared access, cooperation, shared resources, additional tools for testing new ideas and increased cultural understanding for technology.

The foundation these tools provide need to create the ability and capacity for anyone to share in the findings and information of the firm to build new ideas on the findings of others. Vitally these aids in the creation of a community atmosphere of collaboration with technology acting as both the vehicle and catalyst for ideas to prosper.