Everyone wants to be a little “agile” today. Many companies are also working on their agile transformation in parallel with their digital transformation. There are good reasons for this, as effectiveness and efficiency can be significantly increased in most organisations. In this respect, agility in companies has long since become not just a topic for exotics, but a common good. While those in charge of the executive ranks see this as a positive development, various studies show that employees at the operational level often share a more realistic assessment.
Agile change work is characterized by such transparency in team and individual performance that employees often become dizzy. The failure to achieve this objective is immediately transparent to all and not, as in the past, only at the end of a long period, which may last for several years. The term agility combines short development and delivery cycles, a high level of interaction between stakeholders from different disciplines, and quick and direct feedback from customers and business partners.
More and more companies are taking this kind of work into your projects. But is a project setting the right framework for agile approach? Yes and no. A project is, so to speak, the smallest unit for the application of agile methods. In an often manageable setting, the agile elements can be used and applied according to the company context. This is also not new to many.
---
But companies often struggle to create a reliable and comprehensible framework beyond a project level. The higher the speed of digitization, the clearer the course for a project must be set. This requires the selection and introduction of suitable framework models such as the “essence model”. A uniform umbrella is stretched across all project activities by consistently separating content (What?) from processes (How?). In this way, most companies also manage to keep track of their agile projects.
Agile planning and control of transformation portfolio
Agile transformation starts with the effective planning and control of the transformation portfolio. However, the digital wish list often exceeds the available budgets. And even if there is enough budget, there is often a lack of resources and skills. The result is symptomatic of an “innovation backlog”. Companies are suffering from constipation concerning the changes that are coming up and necessary. Agile management of the transformation portfolio can remedy this situation. This includes:
- the upgrading of the role and governance of planning and governance tasks,
- the use of flexible and under-year planning and control mechanisms,
- the definition and prioritisation of transformation projects and
- the narrow-pass use of resources.
This gives companies a grip on the “Work in Progress” known from KANBAN. As a result, the throughput of change projects is increased and the added value from the transformation projects is maximized.
Perform agile Health Check
Agile projects do not work with a snap of the finger. The agile transformation ultimately means more than a project using Scrum or any other agile methodology. In this respect, scrum masters are necessary for projects, but far from sufficient when scaling at the enterprise level. At the moment, there are growing voices that agile projects also have their pitfalls. It is therefore worthwhile for companies to regularly subject their agile projects to a “health check” in the sense of a preventive check-up. This can significantly increase the probability of success for agile projects. This can only be achieved by taking technical and technological aspects into account. The minimally invasive procedure ensures that the agile principles, such as the location of responsibility in the team, are guaranteed and are not undermined by management intervention.
Orchestration of Agile Transformation
Problems cannot be solved with the same ways of thinking that have created them. The question arises for many people in charge of where new, innovative impulses should come from the company. Agility will certainly pave a new path here, and the world in the company will not be as it was before.
Agile transformation is an essential prerequisite for successful digitization. Company-wide agility is to be orchestrated precisely for this purpose.
- Represent the progress and health of your agile transformation projects in a way that everyone can understand. Create the necessary transparency at all levels.
- Get rid of dogmatic discussion in the field of tension between non-agile and agile work by fixing the guardrails as a framework and leaving the procedure to those responsible.
- Easily determine the progress the agile teams have made so far (whether non-agile, hybrid, or agile) and where there will be barriers.
- Manage and master your agile transformation risks right from the start and in enterprise-wide scaling.
