Arquivos business agility - SoftDesign

Why Does Your Company Need Business Agility?

Pâmela Seyffert — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 15:07:30 +0000

In our contemporary society, corporates of all types and sizes are looking for innovation to stay relevant among their consumers and markets. After all, we live in an era filled with disruption and change. However, adapting to this constantly changing scenario is a complex challenge. If your company is stagnant in time, and leaders face difficulties in decision-making, it’s time to activate Business Agility.  

In the world of technology, agility has become synonymous with results. With the consolidation of the Agile Methodology, it was noticed that taking this mentality to other areas such as Human Resources and Marketing, for example, was vital for the strategic alignment and planning of organizations. With that in mind, we share in this content concepts and benefits of Business Agility.  

In the article below, in addition to addressing the importance of Business Agility, we will also show you how SoftDesign’s Agile Consulting  diagnoses obstacles, removing impediments and boosting your company’s growth. Do you want to know how we can insert agility into your organization’s routine? Fill out the form below and talk to our experts right now. 

Let’s build exceptional software solutions together!

Experience having a reliable partner to your IT challenges. Let’s talk about our unique approach to discover and deliver outstanding solutions.

What is Business Agility? 

It’s not a method, nor a framework. However, with each passing year it becomes more popular and necessary for corporates that intend to survive and prosper in the future. According to the Business Agility Institute, “Business Agility is a set of organizational capabilities, behaviors, and ways of working that affords your business the freedom, flexibility, and resilience to achieve its purpose”.

Business Agility. Source: Business Agility Institute. 

Through this purpose, Business Agility gained prominence among leaders and subordinates, and was also described as a modus operandi aimed at delivering value to the market. Therefore, it can be understood as a company’s ability to adapt to changes and respond flexibly to customer and user demands.  

In the podcast Os Agilitas, the CEO of Surya Digital – Business Agility Getting Real, Luiz C. Parzianello, stressed that to put this agile mentality into practice, you need to think with the head of the owner. “Business Agility is about accelerating business growth and positively impacting all stakeholders. But for that to happen, we need strategic leaders who act with visionary leadership”. 

Therefore, we can say that through Business Agility your company becomes: 

Adaptive: becoming increasingly prepared to deal with changes in society and the market in which it operates.  
Flexible: understanding that consumption habits, consumer behaviors and demands always change.  
Agile: facing the fact that every business needs to respect the time-to-market and that quality delivery is the minimum expected, and no longer a competitive differential.

Business Agility in practice 

The decentralization of information is essential to exercise Business Agility. Imagine a century-old company, which has a large structure and several departments. As in any organization, its board has a consolidated strategic plan. However, some areas act more strategically than others, and this ends up creating bottlenecks and bureaucracies that limit Business Agility.  

Over the years, what was noticed in practice was that the technology started to have a very efficient delivery capacity. However, there were barriers external to the IT sector. This became even clearer when the product teams, for example, reached high performance and delivery started to be made on time.  

Faced with this reality, an important question began to gain prominence: How can we achieve results and improve end-to-end delivery? For SoftDesign’s Agilist, Raphael Rodrigues, the answer is simple: all employees must observe the market, not just decision makers. “Corporates need to be more flexible and aligned. That’s the only way we can cross the borders of the board and bring knowledge to the entire organizational structure”.  

This means that there is no point in promoting Digital Transformation in isolation. It was precisely to solve this problem that Business Agility came up. “We don’t have control over many things. So, in some cases, the best we can do is seek adaptation. It’s this kind of thinking that helps shape the company. Remember that agility is flexible and aims at executing feasible strategies”, highlights Rodrigues. 

Diagnosing problems, finding solutions

With the Agile Methodology consolidated, we started to observe the problems of our customers in a broad way, analyzing not only their IT sector. The proof of this is that the first step in the diagnostic process is precisely to understand the scenario in its entirety, and not just what the client understands as their most latent pain.  

With that in mind, at Agile Consulting we talk about the organization’s entire workflow, from where ideas come up to actual delivery. “As we started to understand how the organization works, we started to exercise visibility and transparency practices to identify bottlenecks and pain”, explains Rodrigues. 

Throughout this process, we realized that sometimes people are so immersed in their problems that they cannot think holistically. For this, we work with improvement practices, and facilitate conversations between collaborators and senior management, always in search of value and significant changes.   

SoftDesign’s Agile Consulting service is led by an Agilist. Generally, when we address technology issues, and software engineering problems begin to arise, the participation of a Programmer becomes necessary, who suggests less costly practices that accelerate the delivery process.   

In other cases, we connect Designers to the client to show that we need to apply interviews to really understand the users of an application, for example. Recently, with the evolution of Product Marketing, we have also started to look at sales strategies and the positioning of corporates in their communication channels, which resulted in a specific consulting in this area.

This is only possible because at SoftDesign we have a variety of professionals and skills, which allow us to see problems in a multidisciplinary way. In addition, we have been in business for 25 years, creating transformative digital solutions. 

Our way of consulting

As we have several profiles of collaborating people, we seek support in this knowledge to promote occasional collaborations throughout consulting. Depending on the problem identified, this participation can become a workforce, with greater dedication and more attention and intention from the customer.  

After the diagnosis, we present options to reduce the identified pain. So, we started a journey together with the company, showing through training how certain tasks and activities can be done quickly, with continuous feedback.  

We believe that it is not possible to manage changes in just one month, so we understand that three months is the ideal period to carry out this type of consulting. “We have a lot of respect for the client’s culture and investment. We bring our team and skills to solve problems, pains and impediments. We promote meetings with our specialists, and encourage critical thinking”, emphasizes the SoftDesign Agilist.

Accelerate the evolution of your business! 

If you’re a manager and looking for innovation, but can’t put the strategy into practice, or if you’re part of the organization’s decision-making team and find limitations to evolve projects, Agile Consulting is the solution to your problems.  

With the help of our team of specialists, we started the change process with lean management models and methods such as Lean Change Management (LCM) and  Kanban. From our delivery, we give more capacity to your company, which now has other challenges than operational ones.   

For Raphael Rodrigues, the company that undergoes Agile Consulting develops a better delivery capacity and strategic alignment. “Every company has knowledge management, and we effectively increase the knowledge an organization has. That is, it now has more earning potential, since people are more qualified. That’s a competitive advantage. Every company that wants to survive needs Business Agility“. 

Now that you know what the benefits of Business Agility are, and why it boosts your organization, contact us to put new strategies into practice!

O post Why Does Your Company Need Business Agility? apareceu primeiro em SoftDesign.

Agile Culture to drive Digital Transformation

Karina Hartmann — Mon, 19 Apr 2021 18:13:50 +0000

When I started working with technology, 28 years ago, software development was built through a method called the Waterfall Model: one step at a time, sequentially performed. Each phase used to take longer and the outcome was comprehensive documentation. That allowed us to ‘forecast’ and plan product development, down to detail, (and its subsequent user acceptance), as well as define the project schedule and scope. At least two major problems originated from that Model. The first one was the distance between the user and the product, as deliveries consisting of large software packages were first available to the client months after they had been built. Just then could the client give some opinion about what was being developed. The second problem had to do with changes. Modifying items already delivered – and even pre-set schedule and scope – would depend on the contract, culture, and the hierarchy of the company. Thus, it could bring about some slowness and impair the pace of promptly responding to new business needs. The result was rework, frustration and dissatisfaction for all the actors involved in the process. In many companies, the Waterfall Model has resulted in delayed and over-budget projects, unhappy users, and discredited IT teams, secluded from other areas of the organization. Nowadays, some of these effects can still be detected, as the Waterfall is around lurking in the cubicles of those youngsters who “are building a simple system.”

IT discovers new working models

The difficulties caused by the predictive and sequential model have driven the emergence and dissemination of the agile culture. This culture proposes a series of processes, practices, and tools for designing digital products, minimizing development risks through frequent deliveries and continual feedback. Agile methodology attempts to be adaptive rather than predictive. The assumption is that being able to incorporate what has been learned and uncovered on the way is more relevant than having a detailed plan. Even history has shown us that detailed plans are often incorrect. Scrum and Kanban, despite having their own tools, are examples of discipline and concern with transparency, supervision, and adaptation. In Agile, predictability is not given by plans, but by monitoring actual data. Some of them are delivery pace, whether continuous or in short sprints, and user feedback on the product.

Differences between the Waterfall and the Agile methodologies.

Agility and Innovation

The agile methodology allows us to create a continuous flow of value delivery. We can test hypotheses, collect feedback and make adjustments as we learn, providing the client with pace, risk reduction and predictability. Communication between the parties is frequent and transparent. Small deliveries allow everyone’s learning to be integrated into the product. That is why Agility is one of the cornerstones of SoftDesign. It facilitates and organizes the software development process, making it experimental (from the product perspective!), and providing effective innovation. After all, if we are attempting to create an innovative product, it cannot take months to be launched and only then be evaluated, right? Innovation is the way by which consolidated companies achieve their differentiators, make profits, and sustain their own survival. Startups also rely on innovation to stand out, disseminate and grow. Innovation is essential because products, services, and experiences are copied, they become irrelevant, and that is because the market is constantly changing.

The Common Goal: Digital Transformation

By creating a flow of performance and fast learning, the agile methodology contributes to digital transformation, which is the integration of technology in all areas of the business. The goal is not only to change its modus operandi but also to deliver value to customers. It would be impossible for an IT team to support digital transformation using old work methods. They just do not deliver the same speed, confidence, and results as Agile. Innovation cannot be planned in detail: it requires experimenting and learning – likewise, experimenting cannot be performed chaotically, but rather driven by a method focused on delivery and results! In other words, the ‘IT sector’ journey in adopting the agile culture is essential to support companies through their digital transformation process. It runs much deeper than changing processes or tools. It involves issues such as role-changing, management models, and the foremost and hardest one to be achieved – change of mindsets. Digital transformation consists of cultural changes that require people to constantly challenge the ‘status quo’, feel free to experiment and feel comfortable with likely failures. It is relevant here to point out that the real change is not only about what we are developing, a new product, service or process; or about what is being improved. It is also about how we do the development. There is no point in using methods that do not support learning about the product and the technology to create ‘the new’ or achieve improvements. We need a methodology that supports continuous adaptation and delivery of value. It is useless to seek new results by getting things done in the same ‘old way’.

Do you want to know more about Agile and Digital Transformation?

As a company that offers Product Conception, Software Development, Consulting and Outsourcing services, we can assist partners in three ways:

Product Conception and Agile Software Development, assisting companies and startups in creating new applications, platforms, and systems.
Consulting in Agile Methodology, sharing our knowledge with the IT team for adopting the Agile development method.
Outsourcing, allocating our professionals experienced in Agile to the partner’s company.

Choosing one of the three options depends on the business needs and future objectives. Contact us to find out the best way we can help you.

Let’s build exceptional software solutions together!

Experience having a reliable partner to your IT challenges. Let’s talk about our unique approach to discover and deliver outstanding solutions.

O post Agile Culture to drive Digital Transformation apareceu primeiro em SoftDesign.