Business Agility – Agile Transformation

Since Agile is generally applied in teams of various kinds, we are often asked how it can be applied at a more business level. Being Agile, a way of working, apparently, less prescriptive than other methodologies or more complex frameworks, it might seem that it is oriented to teams that are self-managed and seek to deliver the maximum possible value according to business requirements, thus simplifying the process of creating a product or developing any initiative.

This is all partly true, but an Agile transformation doesn’t just focus on teams, which is where the focus is often put first, in our opinion, wrongly. Any Agile transformation, precisely, to be treated like this, must be global and apply to the entire company. It is the only way that this can be adapted to the needs of the market or context, and as we are seeing, this is increasingly common, with variables that are continuously affecting us (pandemics, crises, wars, etc.). Therefore, we will quickly review the keys to this transformation.

Keys to Agile Transformation

We could list several keys for a company to decide to make the leap organically to Agile. But the first and foremost, in our opinion, must be the sense of survival. Any company, no matter how well positioned it is, and that its sales are at full sail, the situation will not always last over time. As history has taught us, every empire falls. You only have to travel back about 20 years, and many of the main companies that were then at the top, now have a residual presence or have even disappeared … Or who does not remember Blockbuster, Compaq or Nokia? They were giants in their day, with hundreds of millions of dollars in turnover, but various reasons led them to disappear or lose status. Therefore, the long-term strategy must be based on the continuous analysis of the market, context, environment and any other important variables. And from the conclusions drawn, see what products or initiatives are still underway, discarded or started. We call this Strategic agility and the result or tool of this strategy is deposited in the portfolio, where high-level initiatives and their priorities are specified.

Therefore, to promote this strategy, we need managers involved and trained, and above all take into account that we are in the knowledge society and now, more than ever, they must understand that the value of companies is in the people who make them up. These managers no longer only manage “resources”, alluding to the expression of the era of the industrial revolution, they must manage people, and these people base their production capacity and performance, on their well-being and motivation, and at this point, the company, and, therefore, its leaders, have a lot to say. We must forget traditional management if we really want to make the Agile transformation, that is, move from “order and command” to “empowerment and delegation”. In this sense, we recommend the following video: David Marquet – Greatness. Therefore, in this new paradigm, we must train managers, not only in the previous key point, strategic agility, but in the management and leadership of their collaborators, which forms another key, Mindset Agile (agile mindset). This concept, obviously, which is much deeper, must be transferred to the rest of the company.

And finally, based on our experience, another key to agile transformation is organizational change., that is, how do we adapt the structure of our company, traditionally based on hierarchy and control, to this new paradigm, which we remember, is based on product-oriented teams and / or customers? At this point, there may be several approaches, but one of the ones we like the most is the one proposed by John P. Kotter in his book XLR8 (Accelerate – summary), where it indicates that we need a dual operating system, one hierarchical, oriented to the management of the company (functional) and another based on collaborative, flexible and easily adaptable networks, oriented to the development of the company’s value stream, or speaking clearly: products and customers. To give you a clearer idea, the agile scaling framework SAFe illustrates it this way:

The creation of this network of agile teams oriented to deliver value as soon as possible is vital and must be aligned with the company’s strategy. Many of these computers can be independent, but they are usually related and there are dependencies. Therefore, the Agile mindset is essential, so that all teams can collaborate naturally in pursuit of the objectives set. From the portfolio, the teams will be able to go into more detail the work to be done, from the most functional to the most technical or specific.

Agile Transformation – Start-up

Now that we have seen the key points of an Agile transformation, the most difficult thing remains, how do we put it in place? As always, there is no single answer that gives us a solution to everything, but from our experience, we must design a Implementation plan Where we take into account all these points, where the specific case of the company is analyzed and know what aspects in favor it has and which it has against and that, therefore, can torpedo the implementation, and believe us, we assure you that they will. You can use some of the most used agile frameworks (SAFe

, Nexus, LeSS), but above all that you are accompanied by professionals and coaches experts in the field, since a change of this depth, needs support and sustained help over time.

Need help? From pasiona we can help you in your Agile transformation process so that you can do it naturally and progressively. From training and coaching, to the implementation of the same or any of its phases. In addition, if you are not sure yet, we offer you free services for training and analysis of your case. Contact us and we will help you make the leap!