More than 70% of organizations have implemented some type of agile approach in their business. However, the path to turning Agile into success is not always smooth. In other words, challenges remain even in the Agile world, and here are a few industry experts who share their thoughts on how organizations can successfully create an Agile culture.

Learn from your failures and change along the way

Andres Angelani, CEO of Cognizant Softvision, shares that maintaining an Agile culture can be boiled down to the following four key principles:

  • Learn by Doing — Fast, Low-Cost Trial and Error: Failure to learn business lessons from mistakes is failure. Set goals from the beginning, and grow and learn from the organization and stakeholders at every step of the way.
  • Agile “theory” doesn’t help: any Agile implementation needs to be tailored to requirements, not prescribing processes or practices that have no value to the business. If speed, team autonomy, quality, and business results are not showing up, then the person or team leading the Agile transformation is not working. Measure what is important to the business.
  • Put people first: Recruiting, training, and retaining the people you need to help your organization grow its business requires you to work hard to build a people-centered community.
  • Change as you move forward: Business doesn’t stop. Today’s environment demands digital transformation as we continue to grow.

Encourage design thinking in Agile

Jason Cranford Teague, UX lead at Rivet Logic, encourages organizations to recognize design thinking as an important factor in Agile. “Design and development should not be separated,” he says. “Development needs to be involved in design decisions to make sure the solution works, and design needs to be integrated with development so that the solution is built to design.”

Cranford Teague shared that if design thinking is done right in Agile, it has nothing to do with a “design committee” and allows trained designers to guide the solution rather than repeat the content. “Because some of the most important design decisions can’t be made until the solution is developed.”

Assigned to the employee

The only way agile development has a chance to succeed is to create a culture of empowering employees, says Alex Robbio, president and co-founder of Belatrix Software. “This needs to happen throughout the organization, including employees at the management and business levels.”

Organizational process changes are required

Robbio says that when an organization all-in begins to be agile, it involves changing the entire organizational structure, including priorities for projects and initiatives. Often you create what is called “Scrum of Scrum”, where you have multiple Scrum teams. As you continue to scale, you may need to join different agile teams under the PMO.

“Having the processes, information flows, and tools of the digital workshop is critical to enterprise agility, “Robbio said. “Effective governance structures and management can only be achieved if the flow of information is digital. For example, in Agile, is it easy for team members to see the status of a burndown chart?”

Get out of the routine and inspire innovation

Involving employees in fun and learning activities together creates better bonds and promotes team building. Rachel Bush, Marketing Manager, Viget, shared with us how her company incorporated agile innovation into their culture through similar “meaningless weekends.” Meaningless Weekend is a 48-hour hackathon that the company sponsors every year. They also set up a number of programs to let employees know about other teams and roles in the organization. “It allows team members to experiment with different roles and get a better understanding of how colleagues work,” Bush says.

Top-down Agile training

Train every department head in agile so they can go from top to bottom and make sure the process runs smoothly, says Ciara Hautau, Fueled’s chief marketing strategist. “It’s also important to train new people in agile so they don’t go back to the old process in the first place.”

“Our company requires new hires to look at the documentation and methodology to understand how we manage projects using agile methods. A quarterly review is done to see what is working, what needs to be improved, and how the organization is using agile effectively.

Plan Agile and adopt Agile practices at the team level

According to RobBio, teams need to make specific changes to the way they collaborate, such as adopting Scrum or Kanban. There are many different agile methods that enterprises can choose from, and everyone chooses to use them according to their specific needs. “At that level, the digital workplace makes a big difference,” he says. “For example, is it easy for employees to share computer screens with a keystroke?” Do employees have high-quality microphones if they want to talk to another colleague in a different location? Does the team have tools to help them collaborate more effectively?”

Downstream activities require DevOps, continuous integration

At a basic level, DevOps involves development and production working closely together to ensure faster and more predictable software releases, Robbi says. At the same time, continuous integration requires teams to collaborate on a daily basis, receiving immediate, automated feedback to improve quality. “In both cases, workflow and processes in the digital workplace become a core part of how team members receive feedback and improve communication between teams, especially in a DevOps environment.”

Rush delivery

Hautau’s team works in a “sprint” style, assigning tasks that each team member must complete within the sprint time limit (usually two weeks). “We meet two or three times a week to make sure tasks are being proactive or to discuss problems or obstacles,” says Hautau. Deliverables should be lean, but meet enough requirements to add value to the team. This is a very successful approach that not only delivers more projects, but also attracts more business opportunities.

Cash management is the priority

Don’t forget the importance of income and manage it. Ray Zinn, the former CEO of Micrel Semiconductors, which has been acquired, said,One of the key practices for developing agility in an organization is how do you manage your cash flow. “For entrepreneurs, the intrinsic value of savings is in flexibility and agility.” Zinn says, “There is nothing worse than an entrepreneur and his or her organization who lacks the cash necessary to fulfill their vision and mission, so always focus on cash as king. Wasting money on anything that doesn’t move the organization forward hinders agility.