How to make the leap to a truly agile business

Agili­ty has entered the lex­i­con of many com­pa­nies over the past two years. Once lim­it­ed to a niche cor­ner of organ­i­sa­tions, agile has become a core com­pe­ten­cy for all types of busi­ness­es oper­at­ing in an ambigu­ous and volatile envi­ron­ment. 

In the ear­ly days of agile, teams – known as squads – would com­prise soft­ware devel­op­ers, testers and ana­lysts. As spelled out in the 68-word Agile Man­i­festo pub­lished in 2001, these squads would focus on putting cus­tomers at the heart of the deliv­ery process and take a flex­i­ble approach to project man­age­ment, ensur­ing they were able to adapt to change rather than just stick to a plan. 

Many indus­tries have since realised the ben­e­fits of an agile approach and are now apply­ing it to not only sur­vive volatil­i­ty, but to stay ahead of the inno­va­tion curve. 

For online retail­ers, agile can mean rapid­ly rolling out updates to web­sites with new fea­tures or prod­uct lines. In the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try, which is noto­ri­ous for its slow drug dis­cov­ery, squads can accel­er­ate devel­op­ment time by involv­ing cus­tomers ear­ly on in the R&D process. Man­u­fac­tur­ers in the aero­space indus­try can imple­ment agile for faster design cycles. Agile meth­ods have also been adopt­ed by min­ing and met­als com­pa­nies. 

The need to be agile has been height­ened by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic – unpre­dictable mar­ket dynam­ics and sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions have seen agile go from being option­al to imper­a­tive. 

Research con­duct­ed by McK­in­sey in the first few months of the pan­dem­ic found that com­pa­nies that ful­ly adopt­ed an agile mod­el before the cri­sis start­ed had out­per­formed non-agile com­pa­nies. 

Thir­ty-five per cent of agile busi­ness divi­sions sur­veyed by McK­in­sey said that employ­ee engage­ment was sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter; 33% said there was a sig­nif­i­cant improve­ment in their oper­a­tional per­for­mance; and 31% report­ed a sig­nif­i­cant uptick in cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion.  

But the urgency for agili­ty has also seen more and more com­pa­nies claim­ing to be agile with­out ful­ly under­stand­ing what it means. It’s more than iter­a­tion cycles and teams hold­ing dai­ly stand-up meet­ings. Being agile requires an organ­i­sa­tion­al shift that can deliv­er effi­cien­cies across an entire busi­ness. 

Agile teams and remote working

Agile teams work best when they’re in the same loca­tion in close-knit groups as it allows for in-per­son con­tact. This helps to build trust, improves prob­lem-solv­ing and results in faster deci­sion-mak­ing. But the pan­dem­ic meant com­pa­nies had to abrupt­ly tran­si­tion to remote work­ing. 

Those busi­ness­es that were already oper­at­ing in an agile envi­ron­ment would have been well pre­pared to react to the dis­rup­tion. But com­pa­nies that decid­ed to adopt an agile approach as a result of the pan­dem­ic may have had a cul­ture shock. 

“Agile involves sig­nif­i­cant and chal­leng­ing cul­tur­al shifts with­in an organ­i­sa­tion and, from an employee’s point of view, it demands a con­sid­er­able change of habits,” says Tim El-Sheikh, chief exec­u­tive of tech devel­op­ment stu­dio Neb­u­li and a for­mer soft­ware con­sul­tant advis­ing on how to imple­ment agile meth­ods.

“We tend to just stay with­in our bub­bles unless forced to make changes to work­ing prac­tices, as we’ve seen dur­ing the pan­dem­ic,” he says. “These com­fort zones need to be bro­ken if busi­ness­es are to achieve suc­cess­ful agili­ty.”

Agile and remote work­ing may seem incom­pat­i­ble, giv­en that the premise of agile is based on reg­u­lar face-to-face con­ver­sa­tions to exchange infor­ma­tion and deliv­er results quick­ly. Elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion can lead to mis­un­der­stand­ings as non-ver­bal cues can be dif­fi­cult to read, and it can be hard to repli­cate the feel­ing of in-per­son cama­raderie. 

With remote work­ing blur­ring the line between per­son­al and work­ing lives, being respect­ful of team mem­bers’ bound­aries is essen­tial if man­agers want to recre­ate the same lev­el of team bond­ing that typ­i­cal­ly hap­pens in an office. 

Com­pa­nies need to revise the ground rules for com­mu­ni­ca­tion to avoid team mem­bers talk­ing over each oth­er and to reduce back-and-forth. Using tools such as vir­tu­al white­boards can help to avoid con­fu­sion and cap­ture the col­lec­tive view. And there’s a need to be mind­ful of the fact that some team mem­bers may not want to always have their cam­era turned on dur­ing vir­tu­al meet­ings.

Bringing an agile coach on board

Man­ag­ing agile team mem­bers is all about good lead­er­ship. The pan­dem­ic may have shown that com­pa­nies don’t need a full in-house tech team to be tru­ly agile, but agile can’t be imple­ment­ed suc­cess­ful­ly with­out an in-house agile coach, says Jonathan Priest­ley, head of port­fo­lio mod­erni­sa­tion at IRIS Soft­ware Group. 

The agile coach isn’t a tech­ni­cal role but a valu­able one for encour­ag­ing those in lead­er­ship posi­tions to embrace agile meth­ods and over­come resis­tance. A sur­vey by Forbes Insight and the Scrum Alliance found that 87% of exec­u­tives polled viewed the CEO as the key pro­po­nent of organ­i­sa­tion­al agili­ty. Long-time employ­ees can be the biggest detrac­tors and stand in the way of agile being adopt­ed. 

Bring­ing an agile coach into the fold is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant for com­pa­nies that have tra­di­tion­al­ly relied on what’s known as ‘water­fall deliv­ery’. Under this lin­ear sys­tem projects are worked on one phase at a time, with deci­sions made from the top down. The agile method sees teams work on dif­fer­ent phas­es of a project simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, using data and knowl­edge-shar­ing to accel­er­ate deci­sion-mak­ing. 

“Com­pa­nies like Ama­zon, ANZ and Spo­ti­fy are agile because they don’t have embed­ded cul­tures to change. Com­pa­nies that have a long his­to­ry of water­fall deliv­ery face a very dif­fer­ent set of chal­lenges because agile uproots their more tra­di­tion­al ways of work­ing,” says Mivy James, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion direc­tor at BAE Sys­tems Applied Intel­li­gence.

Mak­ing the switch to being agile isn’t straight­for­ward, adds James, and this is where agile coach­es come in. They can teach C‑suite exec­u­tives what to expect from an agile approach, as well as help them under­stand how change should be gov­erned and how rapid trans­for­ma­tion should be deliv­ered with­in an organ­i­sa­tion that usu­al­ly works with­in a dif­fer­ent set of process­es. 

SpaceX: Agile is rocket fuel for tech companies

2021 was the year of the bil­lion­aire blast off between Jeff Bezos, Richard Bran­son and Elon Musk. But it’s the lat­ter of the three that is arguably win­ning the space race.

SpaceX has proved that a dose of agile is just as impor­tant as rock­et sci­ence when it comes to get­ting space­craft off the ground. Musk’s first ever ven­ture was soft­ware firm Zip2 and he’s since gone on to apply the prin­ci­ples of agile soft­ware devel­op­ment to hard­ware – par­tic­u­lar­ly the con­cept of ‘fail fast’ – includ­ing at Tes­la. 

Instead of design­ing a sin­gle pro­to­type, build­ing it and then test­ing it (think: a water­fall sys­tem approach to engi­neer­ing), SpaceX builds mul­ti­ple pro­to­types at the same time. These are then test­ed rapid­ly and improve­ments are made to designs based on feed­back and lessons learned. As a NASA report put it: “SpaceX focus­es on rapid­ly iter­at­ing through a build-test-learn approach that dri­ves mod­i­fi­ca­tions toward design matu­ri­ty.”
This agile approach has meant that SpaceX has man­aged to estab­lish a first-mover advan­tage in the space race. Rapid pro­to­typ­ing has also helped the space­craft man­u­fac­tur­er to low­er pro­duc­tion costs, while con­tin­u­ous improve­ment and inno­va­tion will low­er the price of future rock­et launch­es. The adver­tised price for launch­ing its Fal­con 9 rock­ets is cur­rent­ly in the region of $30m (£22.8m) but Musk said in Feb­ru­ary that the aim is to bring it down to under $10m over the next few years.

Getting the culture right

For an agile approach to be a suc­cess, cre­at­ing buy-in among C‑level exec­u­tives is essen­tial. Lead­er­ship teams effec­tive­ly set the tone for the rest of an organ­i­sa­tion and agile requires all stake­hold­ers to place trust in the process. Com­pa­nies must also be pre­pared for an ele­ment of chaos as ideas and designs are tweaked dur­ing iter­a­tions, says Priest­ley. 

“If agile is to flour­ish, busi­ness­es need to be open to changes in oper­a­tional think­ing. Even tech teams with deep expe­ri­ence of agile meth­ods strug­gle when the envi­ron­ment isn’t aligned to their ways of work­ing. This can cre­ate a neg­a­tive unhealthy envi­ron­ment if issues aren’t addressed,” he adds.  

El-Sheikh agrees: “It’s crit­i­cal that all the peo­ple with­in an organ­i­sa­tion accept and embrace the change to ensure agile is a suc­cess.”

James argues that agile can only tru­ly deliv­er on its promis­es if the cul­ture and com­mu­ni­ca­tions across the board are agile. “If an agile part of an enter­prise comes into con­tact with a part that is fol­low­ing the process but doesn’t have an agile cul­ture, the busi­ness gear­box has to work hard­er,” she says.

Get­ting the cul­ture right helps to attract tal­ent that fits the agile mod­el. But it’s just as cru­cial to invest in the devel­op­ment and pro­gres­sion of the work­force, says Hadas Mor-Feld­bau, glob­al direc­tor of human resources at work­flow man­age­ment soft­ware com­pa­ny Monday.com. 

“Once you help peo­ple to hone their skills, you can allow them to become part of the [agile] solu­tion,” she says. “Empow­er­ing peo­ple to have more own­er­ship and impact will help com­pa­nies to cre­ate and retain a more agile work­force.”

While tech teams might be expect­ed to be com­fort­able with the method from the get-go, some employ­ees will need sup­port grow­ing into the approach, says Priest­ley. Still, it’s impor­tant to remem­ber that agile isn’t a panacea and not all busi­ness func­tions are suit­able can­di­dates for agile meth­ods.

“While the prin­ci­ples of agile ‘done prop­er­ly’ are always going to be the same, it’s going to look dif­fer­ent from organ­i­sa­tion to organ­i­sa­tion. A 5,000-person com­pa­ny will have to approach agile in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent way to a 15-per­son com­pa­ny,” Priest­ley con­cludes.

Unilever: Benelux offers food for thought on agile

Agili­ty and the food and drink indus­try may seem like chalk and cheese, giv­en how rigid and reg­u­lat­ed the indus­try can be. But sup­ply chain short­ages dur­ing the pan­dem­ic have only served to empha­sise the need for man­u­fac­tur­ers to be nim­ble. 

Unilever’s adop­tion of agile ways of work­ing is a prime exam­ple of how non-tech com­pa­nies can suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment agile meth­ods.

Pri­or to coro­n­avirus, Unilever’s refresh­ment divi­sion in the Benelux region had decid­ed to adopt an agile approach back in 2019. The deci­sion was tak­en in order to enhance the prod­uct devel­op­ment phase and short­en the time it takes to bring new prod­ucts to mar­ket. 

Employ­ees were split into sev­er­al teams and dis­cus­sions with team mem­bers led to pain points being iden­ti­fied. The result was more focus and few­er dis­trac­tions. 

In late 2020, almost a year after adopt­ing an agile approach, the Benelux divi­sion report­ed a 25% growth in its project capac­i­ty and an improved time to mar­ket. Employ­ees report­ed a decrease in pres­sure, with 85% of team mem­bers say­ing they were hap­py with the agile meth­ods imple­ment­ed. Eighty-four per cent expe­ri­enced improved focus and 92% said they would rec­om­mend the agile way of work­ing to col­leagues.