CTE Solutions presents this quick 4 Step guide for anyone looking to get information on Agile management or agile project management. Agile is an iterative and incremental method of managing the design and build activities for engineering, information technology, and new product or service development projects in a highly flexible and interactive manner, for example agile software development. It requires capable individuals from the relevant business, with supplier and customer input. This presentation was used as a part of the Smarter Everyday webinar on Oct 31st 2013. Authors: Ellen Grove and Larry Cooper from BSS Nexus

1. 4 Steps to Agile Success
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2. Experiencing massive amounts
of change?
You are not alone. You are also likely seeing that some
organizations are thriving, not in spite of the pace of these
changes, but because of them. In fact some companies are
the reasons for the changes that are occurring – they are
disrupting the status quo. Yet, there are other firms that
appear as if they are lost in the wilderness and unable to
cope or to understand what is happening or what it is they
can do about it. Why is that?
If you were to look under the covers or to talk to many of the
successful organizations you’ll find that they have embraced
Agile thinking and practices. When change is so pervasive, so
all encompassing as to what they do, how they do it, and how
they organize to do it, these organizations and their people
have learned 4 critical steps.
Why are organizations looking at adapting
Agile practices beyond their software groups?
The pace and scale of change is now seismic in nature for many organizations as the
business issues they now face have shifted from the discrete problems many of us
became good at solving early in our careers, to holistic messes, requiring networked and
collaborative approaches to resolve.
This has also given rise to a shift in workplace culture where collective intelligence is now
valued over individual knowledge and hierarchies are seen as an impediment to timely or
even relevant decision-making. Business and IT leaders are finding that the new normal is
that there is no normal. Change is happening far too quickly.
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3. They have therefore come to realize that in order to become more responsive to
the volatile business environment that they operate in; they must find ways of
delivering value to their customers more quickly and more reliably. And this is
happening in all sorts of organizations, from startups like Ottawa firm Shopify, to
established firms like GE and even large government organizations like the FBI,
CIA, as well as the whole of the UK government who recently made it a policy
that all new projects must use Agile practices.
What does Agile Accomplish?
Improved process – Agile enables streamlining processes
and the shortening of delivery cycles so that the right
products are delivered sooner.
Improves organizational capabilities – because of the
emphasis on continuous improvement by the people who
are doing the work, an unintended but highly valuable
outcome is that adapting Agile practices to your context
creates a more capable workforce that is composed of
people who are more engaged and invested in the work
that they do. The people thereby gain greater autonomy in
what they do. Greater autonomy leads to both higher job
satisfaction and better performance
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4. The 4 Steps
1
Engage Early and Often
When you embrace Agile ways of working you engage stakeholders – early and often.
Rather than gathering requirements and then disappearing into a black box,
stakeholders are involved throughout the delivery cycle making value decisions based
on ever-changing business priorities on what gets delivered and in what sequence.
Because stakeholders are involved at each step, the team is assured that they are
building the right things.
The stakeholder is also able to re-prioritize and to make changes in what is being
delivered right up until the final iteration – change is not seen as something that has to
be managed, but rather as something that has to be embraced.
It really is a different mindset.
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5. 2
Develop a Collaborative
Whole Team Approach
Agile organizations develop collaborative whole-team approaches to planning and
delivering work that increase team effectiveness and resiliency and improve overall
risk management.
The most commonly cited risk in traditional projects and the most cited reason for
project failures is the lack of stakeholder engagement.
Another is how long you have to wait to see a working product or to see value being
delivered to the business.
By getting the business to constantly prioritize desired capabilities, it means the less
valuable ones will not get built. This avoids the 60-65% of rarely or never used product
features that many studies cite as the major reason for cost and schedule overruns as
well as the reason that many projects fail. If you only build the 30-40% of what you
actually need you avoid these and other areas of project risk.
Agile is not about “doing more with less” it’s about only doing those things that create
value.
Perhaps Agile’s greatest risk avoidance capability is its focus on transparency and trust.
Teams and individuals are expected and encouraged to identify and address
impediments that can get in the way of delivery goals and objectives – on a daily basis.
Risk avoidance, like planning, is a daily activity in Agile work environments.
It isn’t in a binder on a shelf that no one ever looks at.
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6. 3
Create Simple Work
Environments
The best part is that Agile isn’t based on the use of specific tools and
techniques – it’s a mindset based on creating an environment where team
members and stakeholders work closely together and share information
continuously in order to shorten the feedback loop between having an
idea and delivering the work to make it real.
Simplicity and hence the active avoidance of unnecessary complexity are
fundamental to Agile.
So you will find that for many Agile teams, the best set of tools you can
give them are a white board and some yellow sticky notes!
4
Develop Capable
People
A byproduct of Agile’s focus is the development of a highly capable workforce.
This highly capable workforce also becomes a highly adaptive workforce that
thrives on change and studies have shown that their performance consistently
improves over time.
Their autonomy is enabled through their ability to self-organize and focus their
efforts on the right things at the right time and in the right ways – all without
managers telling them to do so!
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7. What can you do to get started now?
Set people up to be successful by working with them to clarify goals and outcomes
and then setting them free to figure out how to deliver what’s needed.
Second, take a careful look at your work environments and think about what could
change to make it more adaptive to the needs of the people who have to do the
work.
Remember not everything requires big expensive tools – in many cases, Agile
teams go decidedly low tech – by choice.
Some organizations have come to value the serendipity that occurs when their
people interact more – this does not happen when everyone is in high-wall cubes
or offices. They also allow their people to re-organize their work spaces as needed
based on what they are working on and with whom. Teams form, disband, and
reform on their own.
Third, start running experiments - try something, inspect how it is working, and
then make adaptations based on what you have observed.
This applies equally to your product and your processes. Having processes should
not turn people into automatons. Processes are meant to guide – not direct our
actions. Being able to adjust to the realities of circumstances in situations is critical
to being able to embrace change.
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