Agile — A Key to Freedom| Agile Story 19
Today, Agile is a well-known iterative approach in project management, adopted widely in many software development organizations to achieve quality using sprints with short-term deliverables when change and deadlines are a significant factor. The flexibility and evolutionary nature of Agile is attributed to the extreme collaborative efforts and evolving changes in a highly dynamic and competitive client environment. Consequently, Agile methodologies can be conceptualized as a strategic adaptation of processes that focus on delivering high quality working-software delivered frequently that erstwhile minimizes project overheads and increases business value.
By the mid 1990’s the disillusionment and resentment of many software professionals led to inclination of their interest towards streamlining the iterative development methods that could stay flexible and at the same time respond to the real-world challenges which were being overlooked in micro-managed development process framework. The introduction of Agile Manifesto in 2001 ushered in a new era of a revolutionary approach that proved to be a radical alternative to command-and-control-style management of the waterfall model. “Agile” revolutionized the vexed issue of this method prison. With the increased complexity and sophistication of the software industry, the goal was to gain more freedom to shape the projects’ trajectory to delivery. The rules for engagement changed accordingly. The manifesto is written in such a way that implies freedom and creative accomplishment over strict evaluative measures and documentation.
In an increasingly complex, often ambiguous world, the predict-and-plan approach of controlling outcomes to achieve results gradually paved its way to Agile’s sense-and-respond mindset. While the traditional methods were unable to keep up with the ever-changing demands of the customers, agile provided ground for innovation through the freedom to retrospect and adapt quickly to the changing demands of the customers and to increase team efficiency and performance. It would, thus, not be wrong to state that freedom is integral to the Agile way of working.
Agile is fostering a constantly evolving cohesive community that is focused on rapid decision making and learning through iteration and experimentation. Naturally, freedom and latitude to operate come with added responsibility. In an Agile environment, teams ensure that uncertainties and untoward impediments are identified as early as possible. Agile teams often organize themselves around clear objectives and goals to collaborate with each other, build consensus and solve problems. These teams are cross-functional, responsible and shoulder full accountability and share ownership to manage their daily tasks. Thus, they tend to learn faster. Their disciplined routine, can-do attitude and pro-active temperament complimented with self-organizing skills propel them to excel, co-create and deliver with excellence and continuous improvement. It is notable that it is obvious for these teams to learn faster, improvise and respond with quick actions and decisions because they get feedbacks early and Agile supports “Safe to fail” environment. It stimulates a culture of sharing knowledge and mistakes candidly, becoming even more conducive.
During my personal experiences as Scrum master, while working with teams transforming into agile for the first time, I underwent a lot of challenges. The teams were many a times not ready to accept the change and at times resisted adapting to the new way of working. Everything we were doing was all about rapid action, reflection and adaptation to the changing ecosystem. In the short cycles of each sprint we had to find ways to improve and at the same time perform and produce the desirable results. The involvement of the product owner at each step proved helpful. The focus was on the feedbacks that we were getting during the daily scrum calls that actually liberated the team to think innovatively and deliver with confidence. It looked like bringing a “New year’s Resolution” to ground realization. As the torch bearer for the team, I shouldered the responsibility to provide the space my team needed to collaborate with each other so that we could identify what was not working well and keep improving our practices. There were process improvement calls every week and the best part was that the ideas came from the team and not the leadership. Eventually, our team was empowered to perform to its full strength and capacity, work more effectively together, and fairly share the burden of delivering a critical project on time, on budget, and to expectations.
Since agile requires a high degree of discipline, training and behavioral change in the teams embracing this approach, the leadership needs to take a stand on whether effort and expenses of transition to this new culture shall justify the anticipated payoffs. If we can expect nothing else, we can be sure that the core agile values, principles and practices will definitely lay the foundation for continuous evolution to a ubiquitous approach that shall embrace adaptability and innovation globally in various industry verticals.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are my own and don’t reflect company’s opinion. They should not be considered as an advice or suggestion in any way. Every organization will have different needs depending on culture, preferences, size, etc.
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