Day 45 — Agile series 7/7: “Future of Agile”
In the beginning of the millennial, Agile Manifesto was born to rescue custom software development. For almost two decades, Agile is widely adopted and changed the way software products are built with better efficiency and accuracy (on market fit). With the high maturity on of Agile processes, what could be the “next big thing”? What is the future of Agile?
That being said, in this article, I’ll cover the following topics of “Future of Agile”:
- Process & Tools
- Adoption
- Strategy & Potentials
Process & Tools
AI powered Agile
Agile frameworks is based on empirical approach to enhance the project team efficiency and efficacy; With Agile routines/ rituals, it captures both qualitative data (e.g. retrospective) and quantitative data (e.g. story points, burn down chart) as based metrics for continuous improvement. That becomes a great opportunity for AI to come in as a catalyst of automated process improvement.
The power of AI is to find hidden patterns and create crucial predictions. If done well, there’s also opportunities for process automation and let AI to make low-risk decisions.
Since in the Agile process, the quantitative data is already recorded, teams can utilize AI to do data mining. In the future, with the power of AI, finding hidden patterns and creating crucial predictions are now made possible. If done well, there’s also opportunities for process automation, and AI can make low-risk decisions.
For example, if more than 1/3 of team members are on vacation, and the team velocity is low in the current Sprint, also there’s lots user stores remain untouched, AI can trigger the system to automatically schedule an ad hoc All-Hand meeting to promptly discuss velocity issue and solutions.
Agentive Technology
If we take it a step further, with the progress and maturity of Agentive Technology, AI can facilitate some of the Scrum Master and Product Owner work. For example, AI can handle the logistics of running the Scrum rituals: booking meeting rooms, send invite, adjust schedules, order props, etc. Also, AI can learn the pattern of story prioritization, and suggest options as a first draft for product owner to choose from and iterate on.
Furthermore, AI can also help collect feedback from Retrospectives and analyze them to identify recurring issues. Maybe one day, AI can find patterns in Sprint works and becomes an active members in the Retrospectives to share observations and propose solutions.
Adoption
Not-really-Agile, perhaps Wagile?
Even though Agile’s popularity in the industry results in widely adoption, based on an informal survey, there are still some common issues in regards to Agile framework adoption. For example, companies only took the framework for its face value and implement those rituals and routines, but they are not actually practicing the important Agile principles. As mentioned in earlier post, this moves is putting cart before the horse, and created a phenomenon called “Wagile” (Waterfall + Agile). Common complaints are:
- Agile team is not really empowered
- Still too much upfront planning
- KPIs and Definition of Done are not clear
Because the world is moving toward a digital domination space, it’s inevitable that software will be everywhere in our daily lives. For example, Tesla owner Elon Musk saw customers complained about other Tesla owners occupied parking space after cars are fully charged, six days later Elon & Tesla deployed a new software update, with a function that will charge those idle cars owner premium fee.
“Idea to execution in 6 days. Copy that.” — Richard Jhang
This ubiquity of software will force organizations to go through some sort of transformation in order to stay competitive. Therefore, for the future state of Agile adoption, we’re seeing companies will have no choice but truly adapt themselves with real Agile transformation, in order to survive and stay relevant.
New Tools for Agile
UX Integration
From my experience, although there aren’t that many designers who pay close attention to product development (e.g. how it’s being coded or the how middle-ware and back-end work), there are lots of developers care about product user experience. Biased or not, developers have their thoughts of how product should work, and I’ve seen more and more of developers actively track usability issues in order to discover usability defects. Some of these process can be automated with existing tools, and can be integrated in the development process and track them on a routine basis (e.g. Sprint planning).
Strategy & Potentials
Business/Product Integration
In order to make Agile really work, more and more Agile teams are seeking for true Agile integration in business settings. Except for the well-known user stories which foster collaboration between business, product, and developers, we’ve also seen new ways to integrate with business, like Business Model Canvas and User Story Mapping which help Agile team to get into business /product mindset.
Potentials for Digital Transformation
In the 1999 Jeff Bezos’ interview, he emphasized the importance of obsessive over customer experience in order to make long-term business success. This might seem obvious these days, but still some C-suite leaders are used to traditional business school training and haven’t adapted to the digital world thinking. While Amazon started to release product every 11.6 seconds since 2011, Tesla can get a customer complaint, create an idea and complete it, deploy it, announce it in 6 days, the corporate agility is an obvious factor for business success.
“In the long term, there’s never any misalignment between customer interest vs. shareholders interest.” — Jeff Bezos
With the core value of “Learn Fast, Learn Often”, Agile moved beyond software or product development principles, it has become an inspiring guideline for business success. Some companies started using Agile principles for testing business models, without building any physical or software products. Simply put it, business can “test run” their business models and get early feedback so that they can get early exposure with lower risk.
Conclusion
- Emerging technology will become part of the Agile process for better efficiency and accuracy
- With the growing interest, there’s opportunity to better integrate design process and Agile development process
- The maturity and broad adoption of Agile helps business to see greater value in integrating Agile thinking in business model validation, though there’s still room for improvement on cultural change to fully benefit from Agile way of working
Do you have any thoughts on the Future of Agile? I’d like to hear from you.
ABC. Always be clappin’.
