Adopting Agile transformation is not adopting agile practices or an agile culture. While those elements are important, the main goal here is to achieve desired business outcomes. The path toward becoming more agile starts by defining what outcomes are critical to your business’ to success. Knowing what matters is essential when making decisions on how to come up with a tailored approach and mould your transformation to show improvement and to meet critical business objectives.
An organisation’s agility refers to distinct qualities that help respond rapidly to changes in the market while staying competitive and relevant. Adaptability, flexibility and balance are essential attributes to sustain it. Innovation is usually what drives long-term agility. Lack of innovation usually results in organisations falling behind the competition as they don’t manage to evolve at the same paced as the shifts happening in the market. In light of this evidence, let’s have a look at the steps to take in order to lead an organisation’s agile transformation.
Agile’s aim is to help companies take a close look at what values are important from an organisation’s planning standpoint and comparing it against clients’ expectations from a delivery perspective. Organizations often find themselves operating in ways that don’t align with their clients. They may attempt to adopt agile to synchronise this process, but end up out of alignment with how the rest of their organisation operates. Getting everyone working together is a process that can be planned and executed with clearly defined goals and measurable outcomes usually enabled by an enterprise Agile transformation model.
1. Predictability - most companies mention being too predictable as the reason for seeking agile transformation even though agile tends to focus on adaptability.
2. Accelerate wins (ROI) - Agile helps businesses struggling with delivery cycles to achieve quicker time to market and increase their revenue.
3. Innovation - Agile can help in improving organisations’ competitive edge as certain organisations may tend to be less responsive and innovative as they grow.
4. Quality - Agile comes handy in companies’ scaling as it helps focus on quality requirements through to implementation
5. Lower costs - saving costs is essential for an organisation and can be difficult to maintain. Agile enables to assess funds are spent more efficiently hence in areas that are most likely to generate the greatest ROI.
6. The right fit - meeting delivery deadlines is only relevant if you deliver the right product or service fit to your clients. By testing processes and seeking feedback, agile enables you to get the knowledge necessary to achieve this outcome.
Chances are you’ll fail along the way, but in the transformed Agile world, even failure gets a rethink to become the way to go when generating new knowledge.
The roadmap to success involves defining a team based organisational structure, a governance model to coordinate value alongside a metrics strategy to guide and shape a company’s transformation activities. Once established, come up with a pilot approach to test the structure, validate the framework and challenge assumptions made during planning. Metrics help in shaping and informing on the progress used as guidance to drive the remainder of the transformation. Last but not least, brief the team with the knowledge and skills necessary to sustain the changes moving forward.
Social media in the recruitment process
Many organisations look to social media to add another dimension to their recruitment and attraction strategies. However, despite their huge numbers of participants, social networks are still immature in terms of business models. A good social media approach begins with knowing where your target aud
Read MoreHow to avoid bad hires
Hiring the right person for a role is never easy — but dealing with the fallout from a bad hire can be even more challenging. We asked our experts to share the red flags to watch out for… A bad hire can be a significant financial cost for a business and in terms of morale and productivity the real c
Read MoreFive things to think about when hiring a manager
A managerial hire can be one of the most important and influential hires you’ll ever make and has the power to make or break your department, so it’s essential you get it right. A good manager should be experienced, dynamic, trustworthy and have strong leadership skills — but finding a candidate who
Read MoreCome join our global team of creative thinkers, problem solvers and game changers. We offer accelerated career progression, a dynamic culture and expert training.