Will Agile Deliver? Getting Your Peers On Board With Your Agile Transformation

It takes a village to make an Agile transformation successful in any company. Leaders who’ve decided to implement Agile often find they need data and success stories they can offer their peers so the entire leadership team understands, supports, and feels confident in the decision to transform. The following are talking points for you to share with your colleagues.

So, will Agile deliver? Yes!

In 2017, VersionOne’s 12th Annual State of Agility Report reveals that organizations are seeing positive results in the areas they set out to improve when they decided to undergo an Agile transformation. In fact, “four of the top five reported reasons for adopting agile” are also reported to be the areas most-improved by adopting agile. These include:

Alignment between business leaders and departments

Agile organizations put heavy emphasis on transparency and communication between all levels of the business, allowing for clear alignment on goals and the quick removal of impediments.

Management of changing priorities within the business

The iterative nature of Agile accommodates for a business’ ever-changing priorities, giving leaders the time to reevaluate often and pivot in response to market changes as opposed to falling behind competitors.

Productivity

Agile principles and practices increase productivity by limiting waste in the production system complexities, such as handoffs, dependencies, late integrations, etc. This results in the reduction of repeat work, defect costs, and failed initiatives because issues are uncovered earlier in the process.

Delivery speed/Time-to-market

An iterative release cycle also allows teams to release smaller, bite-sized chunks of a product more often. Instead of getting tied up in (incredibly) long-term plans, teams typically release products every 2-4 weeks. Once an organization becomes predictable like this, feedback loops are tighter, giving the organization the ability to give customers higher quality, more valuable products.

Agile has proven time and time again to bring benefits to every level of an organization. Thanks to these benefits, it has rapidly taken over software development and is now spreading to other departments from marketing to human resources and beyond. Today, results of an Agile transformation are branching out to include things like more leads, higher employee engagement, and more recruits.

How do you ensure a successful Agile transformation in your organization?

As with any aspect of business, when you understand and utilize best practices, you see more impactful results at a quicker rate. But don’t take our word for it–take it from others just like you.

For their 2017 report, VersionOne surveyed 1,492 people in Agile organizations from around the world and put together a list of their top 5 tips for success in Agile. These tips included:

1. Developing internal Agile coaches

2. Using consistent practices and process across all teams

3. Implementing a common tool across teams

4. Investing in external Agile consultants and trainers

5. Protecting your Agile transformation with an Executive Sponsor

Over time, we found leaders are more often than not looking for a way to make informed business decisions with confidence. Without a predictable cadence of delivery, organizations are usually flying blind when it comes to making decisions about sequencing work and planning for how those decisions will impact their market and the forecast of all initiatives in flight. Agile is helping companies across many industries solve these problems. 

We hope this article provides you with a few key points to bring up to coworkers when chatting about Agile. If you’re interested in learning more about how we help organizations build lasting agility, check out our Agile  Transformation Services page. We’ve incorporated these top 5 tips coupled with a focus on producing desired business outcomes into our approach to ensure lasting organizational change.