For an organization to embody agility, it must integrate agility into its vision and mission, continually learning from failures to build an Agile culture.
In today’s fast-paced world, it’s common to hear organizations proudly declare, “We are Agile.” However, it’s essential to understand that “Agile” is an adjective, not a noun. It’s about fostering agility, being agile, thinking agile, and feeling agile. Adhering to Scrum’s roles, events, and artifacts doesn’t mean you’ve achieved agility — it’s an ongoing journey.
To genuinely bring agility into an organization, its culture must deeply embody the values and principles. Imagine the organizational structure as a pyramid comprising leadership, strategy, structure, process, and people. Only applying ability to processes is not enough. Agile is 10% theory and 90% practice, causing a mindset change is mandatory at all levels. While training on Agile practices like Scrum Framework might take an hour to implement, but to embracing Agile’s four values and twelve principles, it’s a cultural shift that can take years.
For an organization to embody agility, it must integrate agility into its vision and mission, continually learning from failures to build an Agile culture.
Here are some actionable steps to foster agility within an organization:
- Embed Agile in Leadership and Strategy Simply, making Agile practices mandatory and hiring Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches is a start, but it’s not the complete solution. Agile values and principles should be evident in every leadership meeting, not just through metrics and reports, but through a visible Agile mindset. This approach encourages the entire organization to take agility seriously and integrates it into the organization’s strategy and structure.
- Prioritize Agile Values in Annual Goals Agility shouldn’t be the sole responsibility of Scrum Masters. Product Owners, developers, managers, and leaders in all levels must also show agile behaviors like collaboration, collective ownership, servant leadership, respect, and trust. Organizational goals should reflect Agile values and principles, making them a measure of annual priorities for everyone, including leaders. Every employee’s annual goal reflects Agile principles.
A corporation is a living organism; it has to continue to shed its skin. Methods have to change. The focus has to change. Values have to change. The total of those changes is transformation — Andrew Grove
- Focus on Intrinsic Motivation Traditional motivation models often emphasize extrinsic rewards like money, praise, roles, or power. However, it is important to prioritize intrinsic motivation, which is driven by internal satisfaction and a sense of purpose. This approach cultivates a culture where people’s passion for their work and commitment to the team’s success, rather than external rewards and recognition, motivates them.
- Invest in Scrum Masters Over Team Agile Coaches Scrum Masters plays a crucial role in establishing Scrum and improving team effectiveness and organizational agility. By investing in skilled Scrum Masters, organizations can often avoid the need for additional Team Agile Coaches. After all, Scrum Masters are genuine leaders who serve both the Scrum Team and the larger organization to nurture and establish an Agile culture. Organizations have to use them not just as facilitators to the team but also to encourage them and empower them to be part of the overall cultural mind-shift.
Agile is an attitude, not a technique with boundaries. An attitude has no boundaries. So we wouldn’t ask ‘can I use agile here’, but ‘how would I act in the agile way here?’ or ‘how agile can we be, here? — Alistair Cockburn
- Promote Business Agility Sometimes, product owners follow Agile practices while they’re reporting and business structures remain traditional. For holistic agility, consider frameworks like SAFe to align the entire organization. However, understanding Agile and Lean values and principles allows organizations to develop their unique culture instead of copying external models.
- Experiment with Various Agile Practices Since Agile’s inception, many practices have emerged to support agility, from Scrum, XP, Lean, TDD, and BDD to Agile HR, Agile UX, and Lean Startup. Experimenting with these practices encourages a culture of failing fast and learning continuously, essential components of agility.
Agility is about more than just the following processes; it’s about cultivating a mindset and a cultural shift in all the levels of organization. If management only sees agile as a process change, then it’s a beginning of a disaster of the organization pyramid itself, then only process.