New to agile?
Many companies (and consultants) view "agile" as a software, project management methodology (it isn't). Agile is a set of values and principles. Taken together, they allow teams of motivated people to achieve great things.
The authors of the Agile Manifesto were concerned about software development, but soon discovered what they created could be applied to domains like marketing or schools and many team oriented activities.
Why you care
Agile enables you to effectively navigate around unknown and unforeseen constraints. It provides some guidance on how to sense and respond to change and how to deal with uncertainty. With agility, you can adapt quickly to changing conditions, new opportunities, or emerging threats. It greatly reduces the cost of change.
MANY DOMAINS
Agile can be applied to product development, marketing teams, legal teams, executive teams, schools, classrooms, and anywhere people gather to achieve a common goal. They represent the collective wisdom of twenty innovative experts in lightweight methods. You can read the Manifesto for Agile Development here.
At its core, Agile values people over process
It emphasizes the human element of creativity, quality, and innovation. Engagement and fulfillment are central to the agile approach. “People are not resources,” is a common refrain. The power is in the empowerment and elevation of teams that are self-aware, self-reflecting, and operating with interpersonal communication at its heart.
Agile is decidedly non-prescriptive
One is guided by the values and principles. There is no right way or best practice; there are only patterns of trial and error to discover empirically what works best in your particular situation. In this way, its hallmark is continuous evolution and growth.
Radical Transparency
Everyone can see at anytime where things are, how fast they are progressing, and what’s in the way. This degree of situational awareness means that status meetings become a thing of the past. You always know where you are.
Emergence
In a complex and fluid environment, the end result cannot be predicted ahead of time. Agile organizations plan to replan, and factor in new discovery and learning along the way. The product emerges as more is learned.
CUSTOMER PARTNERSHIP
Frequent, direct, in-person, face-to-face collaboration enables the customer to partner in the discovery and learning. It puts the customer in the driver’s seat so that as new learning, insight, discovery and innovations emerge, the customer and the delivery team can change direction and adapt to the new realities. They can capitalize on unforeseen and unpredicted opportunities.
ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING
Agile works best in a learning organization. “A learning organization is an organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights.” - HBR
RELENTLESS IMPROVEMENT
The power is in kaizen – continuously improving the product and the process to bring it about.
AGILE FEATURES
QUICK DELIVERY
Very short and complete mini-projects, the shorter the better, each one producing a deliverable of incremental value to the customer or consumer of the deliverable.
BUSINESS AGILITY
An ability to adapt painlessly to change, to be able to “turn on a dime for a dime” and respond quickly and naturally to opportunities or threats. It is well-suited to environments where change happens often during a project.
High COLLABORATION
A preference for a high degree of direct, in-person, face-to-face collaboration versus communication by specification and hand-offs, especially with customers and stakeholders.
AUTONOMY
Self-organizing and self-managing teams that do not need supervision. The armed forces, for example, long ago discovered the power of teams, units, or squads that can adapt to changing circumstances on the ground much faster than waiting for orders and direction from far away commanders.
To paraphrase Michael Hamman: