Over the last year, many businesses have been dealing with a lack of personnel because of the Great Resignation. This pattern has continued, with numerous employees switching positions in order to obtain greater compensation elsewhere.
Not only that, but it appears that the United States economy is on the verge of a recession, which could lead to budget cuts, layoffs, and a lot of uncertainty. Some businesses have already laid off workers, including many from their technology and development departments.
Many businesses will be depending on the procedures they have in place to get through these times, and Agile is an essential one to master. Because they pay attention to the work that matters and can eliminate needless tasks that don’t benefit their consumer or increase value to the company, agile allows development teams to do more with less.
“This is the only strategy to avoid building items that aren’t required,” said Diego Lo Giudice, VP principal analyst at Forrester. “And as a result, the principle of minimal viable product, which reduces product features and focuses on those that are most essential, is the best way to handle limited funds… The idea of a minimal viable product helps people focus and spend their money wisely if they understand it.”
The concept of “doing more with less” has long since reached its limits, according to Laureen Knudsen, the company’s chief transformation officer. Companies can’t expect good results if they put more work into fewer developers.
“There is no more room in our people’s schedules to do more. To make space, we need to eliminate waste, which allows us to concentrate on generating more value. We need to stop thinking about how we can be more efficient and focus on how we can be more effective.” Knudsen added.
While Agile is already fairly widespread, there are still those who have yet to implement it successfully. People, on the other hand, tend to make a lot of changes when they are under pressure to do so. Consider all of the adjustments that businesses had to quickly figure out in 2020: remote work, online ordering of items that did not previously have a type system, and more.
“What I learned during the epidemic is that companies who weren’t using Agile began adopting it because it was the only way for their distributed teams to accomplish anything,” Lo Giudice added.
The increased pressure of a recession may cause businesses to reconsider their Agile approach or incorporate new elements of it that they weren’t previously practicing.
Lo Guidice also informed us that scaling agile is one of the most asked questions in Forrester’s application development and delivery department for the past year. Companies are more interested in scaling agile than other hot subjects like citizen development or cloud.
Multiple Agile units are linked together by value stream management
According to Knudsen, Agile isn’t limited to development teams any longer. It has been infiltrating other areas of business over the last two decades.
She noted that newer businesses that were born in this entirely digital era have no non-lean parts of the business. However, more established businesses find it difficult to keep up, and they will not be able to do so unless they overcome the misconception that agility and lean ideas are only for development teams.
She went on to explain that value stream management is required because it allows businesses to take various aspects of their operations and concentrate on the customer’s benefit.
Even if Agile hasn’t made it into production, Lo Giudice stressed the importance of value stream development. For companies that have broken down their development teams into many smaller ones, determining how much money is being invested and what influence it has once it’s in operation might be difficult.
He added that when 200 people were working on the same siloed app, measuring value was much simpler.
“We need to restore simplicity,” Lo Giudice added. “That does not imply going back to separate apps; rather, it entails employing methods, technology, and policies to assist individuals to see where the investments they make are generating value and where there are roadblocks, which is what I believe value stream management will accomplish.”
There are still difficulties ahead
Despite Agile’s age and popularity, it continues to have problems.
One of Knudsen’s major concerns is that companies do not think of their business as a system.
“You can’t expect one change within the system to have a significant impact,” said Knudsen. “We still see companies competing between departments using management by objectives (MBOs) of leaders, despite the fact that many believe internal rivalry is a bad thing. It may be possible, but not if part of your system suffers as a result of it. Those who are able to pivot and adjust to take advantage of new possibilities will thrive in the future. To do so, however, requires that resources such as time, data, and money flow freely throughout your company rather than just through your development teams.”
Another difficulty is scaling agile. Companies that lack uan nderstanding of agility from the outset will have a hard time scaling it, according to Knudsen.
One recurring problem among the firms she has encountered is that they did not embrace agility effectively in the first place.
She feels it’s crucial to have a clear idea of how work will be planned, accomplished, tracked, and measured in addition to agile methods, solid automation, and infrastructure.
In his research, Lo Giudice identified the following three major concerns: Lack of product ownership, strong change management, and business commitment from product owners
“When I hear these questions about projects that go from start to finish, they are always trying to overcome some of these issues,” Lo Giudice said.
New Agile manuals are published by AgileThought.
The release of eight technology guilds by AgileThought is intended to help businesses speed up their digital transformations using Agile. The following are the eight guilds: Data and AI, Enterprise Solutions, Front-end Engineering, Cloud Platforms and Back-end Engineering, Quality, Design and Product, Cloud Operations and Cybersecurity, and Agility
According to AgileThought, for companies to successfully keep up in times of rapid change, they need to have both expertise and an agile culture that can quickly adopt new technologies.
“The rapidly changing digital market has created a need for businesses to react faster, while still providing more value to their customers. Every day, we bring our business and technology experts, proven agile methodology, and customer-first approach to help our clients reach new levels of performance. This structure will also provide high-growth career paths for our staff and assist us in meeting the latest digital trends and innovations for our clients,” says AgileThought Chief Delivery Officer Alejandro Manzocchi.
How Broadcom aid organizations in adopting Agile methods
“To help organizations scale Agile across the enterprise, Broadcom leverages its end-to-end Agile Management SaaS platform. Our ValueOps solution includes the tried-and-true Rally Software®, which allows businesses to plan, prioritize, manage, track, and continuously improve their work so that they can provide value to their customers quickly, quality, and efficiently. It also gives insight into process status, bottlenecks, and dependencies across several teams, projects, and programs. By utilizing a single system of record, organizations can align their strategic objectives with the work and produce better business results. It’s also adaptable enough to enable teams to work as they choose. We also provide a variety of Agile and Value Stream Management services and support for companies pursuing such methods.” said Laureen Knudsen
