Agile in Simplest words

'Agile' is a word that you've no doubt heard frequently in 2018. But what exactly is agility and what can we learn from it?

1.      Agile is a mindset (first and foremost)

In the most basic sense, Agile is a mindset described by four values. The first is that individuals & interactions are valued over processes & tools. The second is that working software (or other products or services) is more important than comprehensive documentation. The third states that customer collaboration should be valued over contract negotiation, and the final is that responding to change should be prioritized over following a plan.

Agile is often implemented as a time-boxed, iterative project management approach to product or service delivery that builds a product incrementally from the start of the project, instead of trying to deliver it all at once near the end.

2.      Agile is spreading

Agile as a framework was traditionally applied to software development, but in more recent years has spread to all areas of organisations, and to all kinds of products and services. Its emergence is driven by the discovery that the only way for organisations to cope with today's turbulent customer-driven marketplace is to become Agile, and it allows companies to master continuous change.

3.      Agile is about people, not things

Much has been written about agile, but much of that writing focuses on things: tools, processes, methodologies, technologies, platforms, big data etc. While these things are important, people are even more important. In particular: the goals that they aspire to, the mindset through which they understand how the world works, the way they work together, the values they share, and the manner in which they communicate with each other. Remember the Agile values: individuals and interactions are valued more than tools and processes - without the mindset, the tools and processes achieve little.

4.      Agile requires a different organisational structure

The agile organisation is a growing, learning, adapting, living organism rather than a steady state machine that follows an existing business model. This concept can be difficult for some modern-day managers to understand. Rather than power trickling down from the top, Agile recognizes that the quality of a final product depends on the inspiration and empowerment of those carrying out the work. They will be the ones accelerating innovation and adding the real value for the customer. When done right, Agile ensures that all areas of the organisation are continuously looking for ways to add more value to customers. Rather than the management extracting value from the organisation, agile generates value intrinsically.

5.      Outside of software development, an Agile Mindset can be adopted as a set of attitudes

Agile in software development makes use of specific frameworks (such as Scrum or SAFe) that allow for continuous iterative improvement. Taking this framework out of the development frame and into more general business applications can be done, but relies on a series of attitudes that should be common across the organisation: 

• Respect: teamwork has to start with respect for fellow teammates. At the organisational level, respect for colleagues at all levels of the organisation, the customer, and the product itself is also key to maintaining an appropriate work environment.
• Collaboration: With increasingly complex systems being built and subsequently complex problems being solved, no one person would be able to hold all the necessary information in their head to complete a task.
• Improvement Cycle: no process should be written in stone. There is always room for improvement.
• Learning Cycle: Allowing individuals to try something new, and yes, possibly fail, gives staff an opportunity to learn and improve themselves. Individuals should be supported for taking risks and increasing the group's knowledge.
• Pride in ownership: Even if no one person owns a particular piece of work, pride in what is delivered increases the desire to deliver high quality work.
• Focus on delivering value: The main point of agile is to deliver value to the customer. The team should be able to focus on what is of greatest value at the time and deliver with the knowledge that others in the organisation are there to help remove any impediments.
• Ability to adapt to change: If the customer calls two hours after a meeting and wants changes, the organisation rolls with it. Any process to manage this change can't be an impediment to change.

I have published this on my linkedin. Please have a look.