Agile removes roadblocks and bottlenecks to deliver products in right time
Agile in my view:
During my 12 years of experience in IT field, I have always enjoyed working with new technologies related to my profile. Recently, I have attended ICAgile training from PALO IT, on agile fundamentals, which made me curious to gain more insight and pen down my learning, experiences and observations about agile.
Precisely, the agile approach is a perfect solution for the productivity issues across various industries and life styles with its unique approach of handling the unforeseen changes, welcoming the feedback instantaneously and accommodating changed focus with repetitive iterations in short span accordingly.
It is a known fact that a very well self-organised individual or process will survive a long term successfully. Agile has existed in this world for 30 years, but it became popular nowadays, as we are seeking more flexibility, greater collaboration, friendly team atmosphere, and reduced risk/cost with the goal of quality product delivery quickly.
Interestingly, during my learning I have observed that agile approach is NOT just limited to Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). This has been yielding significant benefits in numerous manufacturing sectors, verticals and multiple departments in the industries and even in the human body itself. I have tried to share all my analysis and opinions about agile in these major areas here.
What makes me being agile?
There is only one primary factor to achieve it!
Mindset is key factor to implement/start the agile process. In simple terms, agile is nothing but “a Mindset shift”
The Self-explanatory agile history:
Technology Industry and Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC):
Many organizations have faced issues with the traditional waterfall approach such as high risk, longer duration for products to reach the end users, mismatch between requirements and outcome, inability to adapt to the dynamic market changes etc.
The agile approach was created mainly to deal with the issues in the above process. Agile introduced a lot of flexibility and reduced risk by providing products in small chunks during each iterative phase. Agile SDLC framework provides a platform to the teams to collaborate, share ideas, respond to the changes and develop features quickly in each sprint.
Where can we find Agile?
Within ourselves: Human development is agile — A continuous improvement system
Ever wondered how agile is the human growth since its birth?
A baby takes a greater interest in surroundings, attempts to roll and crawl, recognises the faces and expresses her feelings etc. during her infancy. A continuous process of learning how to behave at each developmental stage helps the baby to adapt to the changes easily and grow up as a young adult.
Human body heals itself:
The greatest power of self-healing mechanism of human body continuously observes the phenomena happening internally and attempts to restore to its original state during each phase of change. This process is nothing but agile method of responding to the anomaly in the human body. For instance, if there is a wounded spot, the healing mechanism of the body, which includes various organs, Cells will identify this at first, understand what is required to bring it back to its originality and then works on rebuilding back to the healthy state.
Young kids building the blocks:
Kids find interesting ways of building the blocks to form the structure they desire. They do it by figuring out the outcome in each iteration and transitioning the blocks as per their goals.
In every iteration or sprint, the child would look at the current progress, analyses the permutations, finds the appropriate blocks, and attempts to build the targeted shape. The child’s and flexible thinking and adaption to the change allows them to accept the feedback and get the tasks progressed.
Street Seller who sells fresh vegetables everyday:
A layman scenario of using agile is a street seller who aims to sell his bag of vegetables by end of day based on the unpredictable demand and the supply.
Street seller plays with his rate card based on the demand and supply to maximise the profit within the given time. As agile states, he splits the full day into short interval spans and changes the rate card by accepting the feedback throughout the day. These adaptations are proportionate to the requirements from the buyers and their inputs.
Agile in Sports:
Any product must meet the market at the right time otherwise the product as well as the company will lose their existence in this competitive world!
The well-known example is the changes in the cricket game over the years with innovative ideas. In 1960’s this evolving game went on for five day long with unpredictable results and then it has been cut down to the one-day match that received immense response from audience. Again in 2006, this adapted to the new style of playing 20–20 overs which is very popular now a days.
On top of this, in every match irrespective of if it is a team game or an individual game, the team progresses forward by observing the weather conditions, opponent team’s play, strengths and challenges etc.
Irrespective of age groups, generations and regions, sports are always popular throughout the world! The inherent quality of analysing the current situation wisely and making the next moves dynamically is all built deeply within the athletes. This is all what Agile is about! Agile approach is everlasting and is doing wonders.
Hackathons and Competitions:
Competition tests have been adapting to new style of conducting the tests with spontaneous results without any need of waiting time. Every time, the system has been taking the feedback from attendees, analyses the inputs and improves the methodology in agile manner.
Reflections:
I felt fortunate to be part of the training as we had many enjoyable moments throughout the training. In fact, 2 days training went like a lightening spark and all concepts were very well detailed.
✓ The way the energy was regenerated from the training class mates and being spread across the room
✓ The mood meter and an opportunity to talk about Agile in the welcome and other sessions
✓ Eye opening games about Agile mindset
✓ Games about Scrum and Kanban framework
✓ Two days training went like a lightning spark (speed) and all concepts are very well detailed
My experience with Agile in short span:
I have started implementing the Agile approach in my day to day challenges which made me easier to handle one issue at a time, resolving it and looking towards the next request. My perception towards the task has transformed after resolving initial hurdles and road blocks in different phases of the day. I have learnt the art of prioritizing the tasks, handling needs immediately and moving on to less priority things to a later time frame.
The future is agile — Benefits for individual or Organization:
In overall, agile approach has assured numerous advantages in delivery of products, meeting the market in right time, improves the resource efficiency, optimize performance and utilization. Constant feedback provides flexibility to amend the requirements in the product at any stage of development without the necessity of forcing it to be static. For any individual, this direction improves the focus to deliver high priority tasks, manage tasks effectively and delivers the outcome in a robust manner. In a nutshell, I see there are many advantages if we are ready to accept our mindset to Agile.
“Good luck!!! Have fun learning, growing and leading your team in best sustainable path for tremendous and continuous success”.