In these days of pandemic, lot of jobs are lost and many tenured folks are seeking career changes in areas that are in demand and turn to agile as one obvious choice.
Typical concerns of anyone who is stepping into a new area is as follows
Per the Agile Manifesto “Working software is the primary measure of progress” and in order to measure progress we need metrics.
As an agile coach and practitioner, I respect the relevance of metrics at all levels from teams to programs to portfolios. However please be do not fall victim to the “street light effect” which means we tend to look for data where it can be easily found but does not have much value to the outcome or impact like number of lines of code, team velocity etc. that are most of the time mere numbers that does not help with real outcome .
Whether it’s cloud computing, big data, outsourcing, or the internet of things, keeping up with IT consulting trends and practices can seem daunting. The same goes for business consulting, how do you know which trends and practices are best fit for your business?
Agile has had significant adoption across many organizations; it may be that we have reached the point where Agile is now an innovation for late majority adopters1. There are many organizations who have already adopted Agile, from whom we can learn about what they did, and also still a large number of organizations who have not yet attempted to adopt Agile. For organizations who are considering the adoption of Lean-Agile mindset and practices, one question they may consider is: where do they start2 – what do they need to do to be Agile? Along with that question – hopefully recognizing that what they want is to ‘be Agile’; not just to ‘do Agile’ – organizations also may find themselves asking how they will know when they are Agile – what will being Agile look like?
Business Agility is the ability to compete and thrive by quickly responding to market needs that are revenue generating
This is easier said than done and needs serious dedication and perseverance from all levels or an organization.
From my experience as a transformational coach , I suggest organizations not to emulate the unicorns like Google, Amazon, Netflix etc. because all can’t be like them and all don’t need to be like them as each organizational goal is different and challenges unique so start looking within one’s own context to bring in the needed changes to enable the business agility.
On occasion, during early discussions with leaders that I’ve started to work with as part of agile coaching, when the subject of sustainability for how their team(s) are operating is raised, the reaction is one of ‘we have been operating this way for years; it’s already proven to be sustainable’. When I’ve had those conversations, I recognize that the foundations of the discussion are perception and the context of where things are at the time. Thinking about ‘sustainable’ from one perspective, a Scaled Agile goal from adopting a lean-agile mindset is to deliver the maximum customer value in the shortest sustainable lead time1. Thinking about it from an Agile journey perspective, what ‘sustainable’ means may vary for one person or another (e.g., for leadership or for an Agile Team member), particularly when seen through the prism of different points during an Agile transformation.
