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. 

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”. 

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.

Our Agilist, Raphael Rodrigues, took advantage of SoftDrops* to tell this story, highlight the principles of the Manifesto and explore the characteristics of the Agile Method. Below, we share the most important moments of his presentation.

The evolution of processes

Among the consultants present at the February 2001 Conference, Raphael highlighted: Kent Beck, Rod Jeffries and Ward Cunningham, creators of the Extreme Programming (XP); Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, creators of Scrum; Alistair CockBurn, creator of Crystal Clear; Martin Fowler, author of leading books on design patterns and the UML; and Robert C. Martin, author of fundamental books on programming and clean code.

However, it should be noted that before the meeting, the topic of process improvements was already under discussion in the product area. Some of the Agile Methods mentioned in the previous paragraph took their first steps even before the Conference.

But it is worth mentioning that in 1945, William Edwards Deming revolutionized production processes in Japan and the United States by proposing the application of statistical methods (influencer of the Toyota Production System); and Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiru Nonaka, who in 1986 created the New Product Development Game approach, streamlining and making product development more flexible (at companies such as Canon, IBM, 3M, among others).

With all these initiatives happening over time, what was then the motivation for the February 2001 Conference? The consultants involved were looking for a common model, an alternative to software development processes that, structured in the Waterfall Method (created within the Engineering area), were considered cumbersome and too documentation-oriented.

A method based on empiricism

This meeting gave life to the Agile Alliance, which still dictates and contributes to the organization of processes in the area; and originated the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, with its mindset, values and principles. Such values provide guidance on how to create and respond to change, and on how to deal with uncertainty:

“This work method is based on empiricism. So, what we do today is a scientific method in which we don’t know the truth, we don’t know what will emerge during the process. Before (in Waterfall), what we did was plan and stick to the plan, documenting the steps as scheduled. With the Agile Method, we assume hypotheses, carry out experiments and tests to validate them, which generates learning”, explained Raphael.

The Conference impacted the following years and boosted the emergence of several work models such as Test-Driven Development (TDD); Lean Software Development, Large Scale Scrum (LeSS), Kanban Software Development, DevOps, Mob Programming and Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD), among many others.

Values and Principles of the Agile Manifesto

There are four core values of the Agile Manifesto, which began to be valued after February 2001 in software development practices:

• Individuals and interactions more than processes and tools;
• Software in operation more than comprehensive documentation;
• Collaboration with the client more than negotiating contracts;
• Responding to changes more than following a plan.

Raphael explained that it is necessary to understand that it does not mean that the items on the right are not important and should not be carried out, but rather that in this mentality adaptation, they are inferior to the items on the left, which must be prioritized. Such values summarize the 12 Agile Principles that can be seen in the image below – the first four are aimed at customers; the next four to management, and the final four to the team:

The Agility Umbrella

Agility is a big umbrella that encompasses several practices, from lighter processes for small teams, to more robust processes for larger teams. We can mention Scrum, Kanban, XP, TDD and Crystal as lightweight approaches, and LeSS, DAD, Agile Project Management (Agile PM) and Open Unified Process (OpenUP) as heavier approaches, for example.

For Raphael, Agile Methods are conventions that teams choose to follow. “If the team is working according to agile principles, they are trying to be agile. What matters is not the framework (Scrum, Kanban, etc.), but the agreements that are made within the team. The framework brings a condensation of ideas that worked, but it needs to be adapted to the context and reality of each team”.

In this regard, it is important to point out that it is possible to use several practices in the same project. It is not essential to follow only one framework from start to finish, but to use practices that generate the best results in that case. In fact, in the image below, we can see how the different practices of frameworks can interact.

The Future of Agility

Even with many changes in the world, by observing the agilist it is possible to see a growing movement of agile practices in contexts outside of software development or product creation, where there is greater integration with design practices. And, also, in areas such as Marketing and HR – the latter even has its own manifesto.

For Raphael, the future of what we call agility is more related to best practices in management, leadership and organizational culture, focusing on collaboration and people development – being pragmatic in terms of frameworks or methods. Thus, we guarantee that the creation of products will be focused on customers, and on the end-to-end value stream.

O post Agile Manifesto: Principles and Future apareceu primeiro em SoftDesign.

Its mission is to influence the team’s work and inspire a mindset of constant improvement, capable of resulting in frequent and valuable deliveries and highly desirable products. However, exerting influence among groups of experienced and qualified professionals is not an easy task. Moreover, to positively impact the behavior of a product team, there are a series of skills and specific characteristics that must support the Agile Coach’s management and leadership model. 

Therefore, in the following article, we will explore some of them. We spoke with Raphael Rodrigues, Agile Coach at SoftDesign, to understand the role of this professional in the development of digital solutions. 

The Evolution of The Agile Coach

The role of the Agile Coach is constantly changing. In the past, its performance was based on frameworks such as Scrum and Kanban, for example, people worked with a greater focus on the functioning of the team, helping everyone to understand the phases and status of development. The objective was to propose evolutionary changes through a process of thinking and improvement, capable of increasing the delivery of value.  

However, with the maturation of the processes, it was realized that limiting the Agile Coach’s performance only to the product team was not enough, because people are part of an organization. It was concluded that this role needed to transcend the Discovery and Delivery process. When Agile Coaches stopped working only on development teams, their collaborations began to help reduce noise within companies. One of the results is the execution of tasks in an agile and less expensive way. However, when we talk about Agility in the business world (Business Agility), this role is more focused on strategy, guiding people to share information through micro-interactions.

Wanna Be Agile?

Having the power to influence others is not necessarily everyone’s gift. With that in mind, Agile Coaches must have specific skills. According to Raphael Rodrigues, resilience is perhaps the main one. “To play this role, it is necessary to be a resilient person, since we do not directly execute the actions, but we influence the team to complete them. In addition, it is necessary to encourage the search for problem-solving through individual and group conversations”.

Horizontal management and leadership are also key characteristics.

“Good Agile Coaches have great communication skills. After all, knowing how to communicate well is essential to guide teams, and this leads us to empathy, something crucial to understand one’s work process. At SoftDesign, we operate with Management 3.0, a movement that renounces command/control to make room for the trust and autonomy of employees”. 

Another important skill is facilitation. Agile Coaches are responsible for facilitating conversations, ceremonies, schedules, and group dynamics. “Our day-to-day is based on processes and people, and these are constantly changing. Our journey is continuous, that is, there is no actual end due to the current business model. Therefore, Agile Coaches must be attentive people and very focused on improving things around them”, highlights Rodrigues.

Influencing Product Teams

In a diverse world, influencing product teams can be quite a challenge. Each company has a culture and a set of people with the most varied characteristics. Therefore, getting the best out of each one involves a lot of strategy and dedication. “In my daily life, I need to be connected to what is happening, to what people are talking about, and, above all, to what they are not communicating. For this, we hold one-on-one (1:1) meetings, and facilitate meetings to generate interactions and create agreements”.

In addition, Agility involves management practices oriented to business objectives. To execute them, it is necessary to give everyone a voice, as this is the only way to develop products that simplify users’ lives. “In interactions, we get in touch with people with the most different levels of maturity, experience, and age group. In the end, what keeps us engaged is the purpose of the work and the challenge of winning something together. When we unite different perspectives and experiences, the result is a plural development process. Without diversity, the ability to solve problems is reduced”, he highlights.

Agile Coaches encourage, guide, and help generate paths and options. In summary, Agile does not oblige us to follow a single direction until the end of the development of a digital product or service, on the contrary, it creates milestones for us to navigate, allowing moments of analysis that allow us to measure whether choices are resulting in desirable results. Therefore, to boost team performance, Agile Coaches seek to create awareness between what the group has committed to deliver, and what is actually being delivered. “We look for results, and we help people to do what needs to be done within the agreed time frame. We reduce conflicts to achieve goals through more fluid processes, clearing obstacles”, emphasizes Raphael.

Agility Is Not Just Speed

When using Agile, companies seek feedback as quickly as possible, respecting the nature of what is being developed. After all, everything has a maturation time. This is complex, as we are unique people, that is, each of us has our own task execution time, based on an individual creative process. 

So the key question is: how do we get the best out of each one without getting lost in the process, and without taking longer than expected? Through ceremonies. In a diverse and knowledge-filled environment, replicating processes can be a great challenge, since getting the best out of the group is something that can be achieved with conversation, rhythm, and follow-up. 

With this in mind, Agile Coaches analyze project boards daily to diagnose stages and possible obstacles. Based on this analysis, they interfere and help improve processes, or even assist in completing activities.

“I help connect people and solve problems. In ceremonies, we make it easy for everyone to put themselves in a state of awareness, so we can influence the team to make good decisions”. 

Ideally, each Agile Coach should work on a maximum of three projects, interacting with 15 to 20 people. That way, the Agile Coach can connect and follow up properly. “Expanding these numbers results in a superficial process, and this impacts the essence of Agility. We are knowledge workers: therefore, when we don’t have time to reflect and create, we are not able to innovate. If the schedule is full and we are just completing tasks, the teams become burdensome. After all, the value of our work lies in the ability to think and be creative”, concludes Rodrigues. 

Let’s accelerate the evolution of your business?

If your team is just completing tasks, then it’s time to wake up and put Agile to work. In addition, if problems and bugs are reducing the rhythm of deliveries, to the point that people are unable to reflect and propose solutions, our Agile Consulting can be an important ally.  

To accelerate the adoption of a culture based on Agile Methods, we work with a customized mentorship according to your needs. During the consulting process, we transfer our knowledge in Scrum, Kanban, and DevOps to your team. The objective is to increase transparency and dialogue between people, to generate more frequent and valuable deliveries. Watch the video below and learn more about this service:

Want to know how we can help you more specifically? Fill out the form below and chat with one of our experts.

O post Agile Coach: The Power Of Influence apareceu primeiro em SoftDesign.