What is the Agile Method?
Agile is a buzzword these days. For project managers and developers, the Agile Method is not new. Since the early 2000s, this method has been adopted to accelerate innovate and bring a customer-focused mindset to development teams.
Fast forward to the present, and all teams across organizations are under pressure to innovate and re-invent themselves while adapting to waves of disruption. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the world how consumer behaviour and entire industries can change drastically in a matter of weeks. This shift has caused leaders and teams from the executive suite to the digital department look for ways to reinvent themselves in order to create a different future that is built for our new normal.
In comes the Agile Method. Agile focuses on fueling the start-to-end process of solution development with feedback from your teams and customers. That means products don’t always end the way they started (in a good way!). It encourages rapid prototypes and iterations vs. lengthy product plans to increase the speed of problem solving, learning, and go-to-market timelines. Teams make changes and adapt to disruption as it happens, without restarting the planning process.
It’s no surprise that Agile projects are 28% more successful than traditional projects. COVID-19 has caused companies to pivot and innovate a a much faster pace, and as a result 55% of companies in a survey said they plan to increase the use of Agile within the next 12-14 months.
But all of this is just the tip of the iceberg. Below, we’ve outlined a concise definition of the Agile Method and the reasons why companies are adopting this methodology to innovate faster more than ever.
What is the Agile Method?
Agile aims at accelerating a team’s ability to innovate, create customer-centric solutions, and adapt to disruption. And while The Agile Manifesto was originally developed for software development, its mindset and principles are easily translated and beneficial across disciplines.
AGILE MANIFESTO
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software / products / services over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
AGILE PRINCIPLES
Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.
Deliver working software (or products, experiences) frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
Working software is the primary measure of progress.
Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential.
The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
THE DIFFERENCE
The differentiating factor of Agile is its focus on people and how they work together. There’s a powerful emphasis on collaboration and constant feedback. Solutions evolve and are found quicker with self-organizing, cross-functional teams that share the same objective.
The second key factor is Agile’s customer centricity. Teams don’t aim to solve every potential problem from the onset, and instead prioritize getting better products to customers faster with iterations along the way. This method includes actively gathering feedback and data about the customer experience to improve solutions. The Agile method focuses on getting products and solutions to launch quicker to improve the customer experience. It also recognizes that the current development
and development as they’re in the process of being designed.
How Agile Drives Innovation Today
The agile process has made it’s way into all levels of organizations, including the C-Suite. Here’s why the Agile Method allows forward-thinking companies to innovate and adapt faster than competitors.
PEOPLE OVER PROCESSES
In short, enthusiastic people should be what builds the agile teams rather than a set of rules. By providing an agile team the correct mix of people and skillsets, they can fully collaborate on any problem you give them. This abandonment of traditional practices leads to rapid problem-solving. It’s cuts out the anchoring effect of overly formalized processes and encourages people to customize how they work whenever it helps reach objectives faster.
ACCOUNTABILITY & MOTIVATION
Agile teams, when done correctly, empower people to bring their ideas forward. The entire team is dedicated to a single project, often on a full-time basis. This change builds trust among team members and prevents the silo effect. It holds people accountable to a common goal instead of focusing on hyper-specific roles.
RAPID ITERATION OVER EXCESS DOCUMENTATION
The agile method focuses on getting real results for customers. Oftentimes, initiatives are planned in granular detail from start to finish before work actually begins, and teams restart the entire planning process whenever they find a flaw during development.
Agile teams focus on delivering constant innovations and improvements along the way rather than following a long plan that may or may perform as expected. It minimizes the waste that comes from long meetings, repetitive planning, over documentation, and indecision. By focusing on these iterative “sprints”, your team can quickly come out with new products and innovations, study the real-world impacts and adjust as necessary.
RESPONSE TO CHANGE
Predicting how a project will go and every task that will be required rarely works out. Instead of predicting, agile teams focus on the immediate problems to solve and collecting on-the-go feedback. They focus on identifying opportunities and problems throughout the process, not just at the start. Then, as the project develops, they can respond to change without being bogged down in expectations.
This adaptive process allows teams to pivot and adapt to changes in customer behaviour, trends, and competitors as they come. Disruption is now a part of the day to day, and the reality is that spending several months in planning mode can leave you with an obsolete product at the end. Instead, teams need to change as quickly and adapt as fluidly as the environment around them.
Looking at Agile full-circle, its clearer to see how it is more of a new-world mentality that guides how you work rather than a defined process. It allows teams to change priorities quickly, create an all-in alignment, and increase speed to market. All of these capabilities are becoming increasingly critical with a world that is currently changing faster than companies.
In our next post, we will review another highly successful methodology that everyone should know about… Design Thinking.
Are you interested in injecting the talent you need to make your company more agile? Contact us today to see how we can help you grow with our network of agile experts, innovation-focused executives and flexible talent.
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