Ten ways to make agile work for your business

Richard Hilsley at Mindera shares ten principles that can help make an agile transformation work for your business

Agile was once the new game in town. Championed by organisations as a better way to structure themselves, it started to gain traction and became more widely adopted. Everyone could see the benefits of teams feeling more empowered, in control of the planning and delivery of their work, and quality not being forsaken – all things that more traditional ‘waterfall’ based techniques have consistently failed to adequately cater for.

Although agile development is now widely adopted, it remains challenging for many organisations to do properly - this is particularly the case for large businesses contending with bureaucracy and internal politics. This is where ‘agile transformation’ can make a difference, but it can take a real concerted effort to see impactful results.

In this article, I want to share ten principles that I’ve seen in practice that help make an agile transformation work for your business.

1. Don’t underestimate human behavioural change

A key ingredient to successful agile adoption is enabling change. Change is hard. It’s easy to talk about wanting it but difficult to accept that as an individual, you are part of making it happen, especially when it means giving up aspects of oneself that have been traditionally associated with power and control and rewarded as such. It’s deeply psychological and talks to the culture of an organisation.

A big part of this is handling resistance, gradual regression back to old but familiar ways of working that can feel strangely comforting when people are faced with changes in processes and behaviours that are often deeply ingrained.

2. Manage expectations

Try to think of your transformation more as a transition. Transition conveys incremental change and improvement. This subtle language helps avoid the disillusionment that so often accompanies a grand transformation that promises so much but often comes up short.

3. Understand where you are before you start

Any journey begins with knowing where you’re starting from, and it’s no different with agile adoption. For example, in our business, Mindera have developed an agile maturity assessment framework, honed from years of experience in the field.

The framework operates holistically at the enterprise level and is built on five pillars: Strategy, Culture, Process, Structure, and Technology. Each pillar is comprised of multiple attributes or characteristics that form the basis of assessment and allows for maturity ratings to be shared. Aggregated across the five pillars, you can receive an overall maturity score.

Our maturity assessments are conducted from a blend of stakeholder interviews, background reading, and live observation. They can really help diagnose problems and prioritise areas for driving systemic improvements in agile, while helping to inform an optimal pathway for transition steps. They can offer evidence and visibility on why certain areas need more help, and others may need less attention. It’s also very useful as a tool for periodic analysis, including tracking ways of working improvements.

Conducting an agile maturity assessment is an ideal starting point for aligning stakeholders and building consensus on the need for change.

4. Get senior buy-in from the off

The chief executive must face up to and embrace the question ‘why change?’ to sponsor agile adoption across an organisation. Sponsorship for agile must come from the top as, most often, the things that need addressing are the founding pillars of the organisation itself.

5. Review your core principles

Consider whether your core values are fit for purpose. Organisation structure and reporting lines; funding mechanisms; reporting; governance; people capability - all these elements should be reviewed. If you find blockers or things that require changing, draft in the support of your CEO or chief sponsor to help address them.

6. Don’t overreach

The key to success is choosing your battles wisely and knowing where the boundaries lie, and how far you can push them. Think of your organisation as a ‘product’, making incremental improvements and releasing new versions of that product over time.

7. Employ experienced people

A key ingredient to successful agile adoption at scale is having experienced change agents to guide, coach and facilitate. Consider setting up a centre of enablement - a small team of experienced agile practitioners who can understand the big picture and orchestrate activities in a way that is coherent and brings people along on the journey.

8. Be prepared to handle push back

You’ll inevitably encounter resistance on your agile journey, but you must do your utmost to avoid gradual regression back to old but familiar ways of working. Sometimes these can feel strangely comforting when people are faced with changes in processes and behaviours that are often deeply ingrained. However, regression will lead to frustration and a feeling that you’re wasting your time.

9. Make sure everyone is brought along on the journey

It’s very easy to talk about wanting change, but it’s difficult to accept that as an individual. However, we need to accept that everyone plays a of making change happen, and with that may come the realisation of having to give up certain aspects of power and control.

If you feel resistance, think about how you can use your enablement team (or its equivalent) to coach staff and bring them along on the journey.

10. Practice what you preach

A lot of organisations claim to work in an agile way, but it’s often not implemented or followed correctly. This can lead to disillusionment and time wasting, so try to ensure when you commit to agile - you really commit to it. Half measures will not result in optimum outcomes.

If you’re on the start of your agile journey, good luck and enjoy seeing the results. Naturally, things won’t always go to plan but if you try to keep to the ten principles outlined above, you stand a much greater chance of real success of becoming a truly agile.

Richard Hilsley is the Managing Director of Mindera

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com