In many organizations throughout the world, Agile has become much more than a buzz word. It has become a way of operating, a way of doing things and a way of seeing success on a regular basis. With this ongoing emphasis in marketplaces throughout the world of catering products, services and options that clients will find appealing, useful and worth their time and money, how do you make sure your company is focusing on the right things now?
Many solutions and companies will suggest training, coaching, embedding consultants who know how to do the work with your teams and many other hybrids of these. What is right for your company? What do we even need? Do we have a problem with identifying the right strategy or market release plan? Do we have the right people in place?
There are many questions to ask and the answers can spread across a myriad of potential answers and solutions. They seem as numberless as the grains of sand on the beach. There needs to be a starting point somewhere to assess where you are, where you want to be and also to have some self-awareness to recognize the path that needs to be taken. Without mapping this out with some level of detail, what we deem as successful might not be what will result in recurring revenue or long-term sustainable success.
Let's look at some beginning stages of implementing or improving Agile in an organization. You have been using Agile in your company's form for 5 - 6 years. You find that there are the ceremonies that seem to exist on a daily basis, there is some rough planning that is occurring that is labeled as "Sprint Planning" but you are not seeing the urgency behind delivery for the team as they are not delivering everything committed to in their "Sprint". You can't remember the last time this happened. No one seems overly concerned about the delivery mechanism. What problem truly exists?
All good implementations must start at that stage. Recognizing a problem indeed exists. Even for organizations professing use of Agile, you must recognize what the real problem is so it can be addressed. With this overwhelming realization that a problem exists, perhaps the question that many people forget to ask is how can the problem be fixed? Is Agile the solution or mechanism that can fix it? If so, how can Agile help to fix the problem in question. If there is no recognition of a problem or deficiency, will anything genuinely be changed?
This step alone typically takes some true introspection as a company to identify the problem areas but also the things going well and how to truly address the issues at hand. How this aspect is addressed will help to determine the effectiveness of the next steps you take to have Buy-In from the right stakeholders to truly enable change. Stay tuned for the next piece of the Agile 12 Steps to get more information on getting Agile in Motion for your organization.