Embracing an Agile Mindset
Adopting agile methodologies successfully requires the right mindset. For this iterative and adaptive approach to thrive, you need to embrace the following elements and characteristics.
- Speed and experience. Agile produces outcomes quickly, but that speed comes at a cost. You need dedicated experienced people on the team to produce quality outcomes and you need management involved in the effort, so they know what they’re getting. Don’t try to have less experienced people produce interim deliverables, which are then reviewed by those with experience. If you do that, the experienced folks can find shortcomings in the deliverables and request changes. For agile to work, deliverables and decisions must be “veto-proof.” That is, they cannot be overridden by a team leader or manager who doesn’t like the outcome. This demoralizes the team and sacrifices the speed that agile is supposed to generate.
- An “allow for learning” mindset. A benefit of agile is that it allows stakeholders and team members to learn. Using deliverables inspires learning and continuous improvement of the project’s products. That means stakeholders must be ready for products to be reworked after installation. Also, that learning often shifts the priorities from producing new deliverables to reworking earlier ones. Overall, this volatility in what the team works on is productive. The downside is that stakeholders who are eager to use new features might be disappointed. To support the learning organization mindset, be sure to communicate and reassure stakeholders.
- Encouraging frequent small improvements. Agile produces the most important, business-improving deliverables early. This fast delivery of value can create expectations that business improvement will continue at that rate. Yes, the improvement will continue, but not at the same blistering pace as at the project start. The outcomes that agile produces are typically incremental improvements. Rarely does agile produce single big leaps. Make sure stakeholders understand that improvements will be smaller and that changes will occur often as the project continues.
- Trust and empowerment. For an agile team to thrive, stakeholders, management, even end users, must trust the team. The team needs to have permission to decide how to accomplish business objectives. This includes making decisions about adjusting business processes. If trust isn’t there, the value of agile diminishes. Speed decreases, and team members will become frustrated.
- Simplicity. Agile methodologies favor simplicity over complexity and excessive documentation. Simplicity applies to processes, communication, and deliverables. Stakeholders must forgo the bureaucracy and documentation they received in the past. Focus instead goes to delivering working solutions. Documentation is developed from an exercise of watching how end users use those working solutions.
Do you have other suggestions to add to the agile mindset? Share with us in the comments section.
For more about agile, check out Doug Rose’s Agile Foundations course.
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