Why are we even trying to be agile?
Has anyone in your organization ever answered this succinctly? Is there a reason your company is trying to transform the way it works and thinks?
I hope so.
If they have not said anything, you might have the same fear I do. What if even the executives of your company don’t really know WHY they’ve decided to become agile? Maybe they don’t know WHAT agile even is! Maybe a big consulting firm told them they should. It might be because the prior executive started it and they’ve inherited it as a large body of work in progress. It might even just be because “everyone else is doing it.”
But I think you deserve to know why. Or at least instigate the conversation.
And if you don’t get good answers from your senior leadership, maybe you or someone you know can help put something together that explains exactly why your company has decided to become agile. Hand it to them on a silver platter so that it might be shared with others.
I suspect your executive team does know why. In fact, I think the reasons are often very similar across companies and likely includes one or more of the following: to innovate faster; to survive; to keep up with competition; or to increase customer growth and retention.
If you suspect your leaders or managers are struggling to explain “why agile” to you and your teams, try something like this. See if it sparks a good conversation…
What is Agile?
- Is agile just like waterfall but done in two-week sprints? No.
- Is agile a strict set of rules you have to follow? No.
- Is agile used the same way by all teams? No.
- Is agile only for technology teams? No.
- Is agile a methodology? No.
- Is agile hard to learn? No.
- Is agile a framework? No.
- Is agile a process? No.
- Is agile a tool? No.
Agile is a Mindset!
It’s the way of working in modern business …
- because our world is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous…
- so we need to adapt more quickly to market needs and opportunities…
- using a big toolbox that everyone might use a little bit of this or that.
It’s a way of thinking that combines some common sense concepts…
- be iterative. Start small and get feedback sooner. Decide what not to create. Validate what’s valuable.
- be customer-centric. Focus on outcomes they care about and measure results. Lead with why.
- be product-focused. Build long lasting capabilities and organize around long lasting product teams.
- be learning always. Employees who better themselves will serve our customers better.
- be experimental. Test ideas with experiments. Learn from failures. Think hypotheses not requirements.
- be continuously improving. Inspect, adapt, be transparent. Help each other be 1% better.
- be psychologically safe. The foundation. Ideas can come from anyone. If no one is afraid to share ideas, we guarantee greater innovation.
If you enjoyed this, please clap and share. It means a lot to know my work on this blog is read and used by agilists out there in the world.
Hi, I’m Brian Link, an Enterprise Agile Coach who loves his job helping people. I call myself and my company the “Practical Agilist” because I pride myself on helping others distill down the practices and frameworks of the agile universe into easy to understand and simple common sense. I offer fractional agile coaching services to help teams improve affordably. See more at FractionalAgileCoach.com
How well is your team “being agile”? Our self-assessment tool focuses on 24 topics of modern ways of working including the Agile Manifesto and Modern Agile basics, XP, Design Thinking, Lean, DevOps, and Systems Thinking. It comes with deep links into the Practical Agilist Guidebook to aid continuous improvement in teams of any kind. Learn more at MakeTeamsAwesome.com
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