What do you consider the benefits of Agile? 🤔
It’s a simple question that can lead to a wide variety of answers:
✅ Navigate complexity and quickly validate assumptions
✅ Increase predictability and minimize risk
✅ Deliver value to our stakeholders, customers, and users sooner
✅ Increased team morale and stakeholder satisfaction
- Etc.
I recently started asking this question during workshops and meetups, which resulted in various answers. My follow-up question was: to what extent does your organization get these benefits? 🤷♀️
In short, despite years of investments to increase organizational agility, most believe their company doesn’t gain from the potential benefits. 😲
I may have dealt with skeptical groups. Perhaps they’re critical about their organization, and things aren’t so bad. It’s an interesting pattern, though. Even more interestingly, it has been primarily Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters, and other Agile practitioners who believe their organization doesn’t gain from Agile’s potential benefits.
Given that many organizations are rethinking the value of Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters, this conclusion can be tricky.
My recommendation would be:
👉 First, create a shared understanding of the benefits of Agile for your organization. Make it tangible and specific. What does successful usage of Agile look like? What does unsuccessful usage look like? What are the benefits of Agile for the teams, management, and stakeholders? What’s in it for them?
👉 Second, make it a shared responsibility. Yes, Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters play a critical role, but they can’t do it alone. Support from management, leadership, and stakeholders is essential. Make them your allies. Don’t work against them but with them.
👉 Third, measure progress. How do you know your organization is gaining the benefits of Agile? Focus on patterns and trends. Use evidence-based feedback, qualitative and quantitative data, and metrics focused on measuring the outcome to track progress.
👉 Fourth, create a climate of continuous improvement. It’s okay to have significant improvement goals but refine them into smaller chunks to see the results quickly. This morale booster creates a vibe of possibilities instead of only seeing problems and obstacles.
👉 Fifth, don’t focus too much on Agile, Scrum, Kanban, etc. They’re means to an end. Have an open mindset. Don’t get stuck with your favorite framework or methodology. The organizational need comes first; your approach should always be secondary.
What recommendations do you have to help organizations gain the benefits of Agile? Share your thoughts and ideas, and let’s learn together❗