Agile Product Development Requires Changing Your Way of Thinking
Trying to become an agile product development organization? Go ahead. Pictures are glued, patched up with plaster and fixed with chewing gum. But you cannot glue, patch or fix a change. That is why no product development process, much less an organization, can become agile or able to learn just by deciding it.
The greater the change, the more you need to develop and guide the operating methods in the desired direction. We develop and train our customers in agile product development with great joy and passion. However, sometimes it feels that the tools and operating methods of development are stuck in the same club as product and business development. At worst, our customer companies find it difficult to lead agile product development processes if the company utilizes non-agile operating methods. The funnel of the ever-accelerating development train must also fit the organization’s operating methods, personnel, and stakeholders, and you must observe the changing landscape in order to provide your customers with value that they are ready to pay for.
A New Way of Thinking, Better Results
The reason why change is talked about so much is that adapting to change has become a lifeline for companies — not because it is trendy, but because the rate of change on the market is accelerating and keeping up with customer understanding is difficult, even for customers themselves. Change is difficult, but any company can adapt. In order to be able to adapt, companies need to be ready to transform: this requires the mandate and example of the management, as well as genuine will and commitment.
An agile organization develops its products and services as a continuous cycle and, at best, generates both good and bad ideas frequently. This is possible because the personnel have learned an agile and situationally aware way of thinking. Because all operations are iterative in nature, changes will flow between the functions as part of the organization’s natural ecosystem.
At best, and perhaps at the most ideological, there is no change, only adapting human minds. Instead of posing a threat, change adapts into a part of the organization’s agile way of thinking and operating. The worst threat is stagnation.
Sometimes product development starts from changing your way of thinking. Are you ready? We are.
Originally published at contribyte.fi on February 22, 2018.
