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!

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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.

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Validating Change Process

Strategic Change Canvas. Source: https://leanchange.org/

5 Universal Dimensions of Change

• Cause and Purpose: what is urgent for you may not be for the other, and this situation can generate stress among team members. However, when we come together for a collective purpose, we are more likely to move towards a solution in a light and collaborative way.
• Significant Dialogue:  Communication is very important in the change process. When working with complex changes, it is necessary to create an environment conducive to dialogue, where practices from the Lean Change Management model and the Agile Manifesto are important tools.
• Response to Change: resisting change and innovation can be common in some companies, especially in more traditional ones, and this is one of the reasons why the Agile Method can fail during its adoption process. If people are very resistant to change, it can also mean that they do not feel invited to participate in this moment of company transformation. Remember that being inclusive and diverse is crucial.
• Co-creation: to make everyone believe and accept change, it is necessary to empower people. The Culture of Collaboration is essential to promote understanding and alignment among all. For this, it is necessary to make room for people to co-create together.
• Experimentation: it is necessary to run experiments instead of tasks. It’s not possible to predict what will happen with complex changes, which is why trusting cycles of experimentation and feedback is so important. Only in this way can you modify and adapt plans as you go along.

Lean Change Management X Traditional Change Management

LCM at SoftDesign

Change is Our Only Certainty

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So, in this article, we will clarify which occasions require Software Development and which require Software Architecture Consulting. To start, let us clarify who the professionals involved in these services are.

What is the difference between a senior developer and a software architect?

 Many people believe that software architect is synonymous with senior software developer. The architect is indeed a developer, but his vision has become broader through the experience he has gained, so he has a complete sense of how solutions work at different levels.

This means that both the developer and the architect master certain programming languages (according to their specialty), but the architect understands more deeply, for example, about how that language interacts with the computer’s memory or how it will behave when using multiple server instances, among other cases. That is, the developer is a user of technology while the architect also understands the mechanism and its inner workings.

It is worth noting that software architects are not all the same. Like developers, they trace their own paths that provide them with knowledge about certain technologies or areas, which makes them experts. From these areas, they understand the deep criteria of functioning, for example: some architects are specialized in cloud services and microservices, others are more knowledgeable about databases, and there are also those specialized in security.

What are functional requirements and non-functional requirements?

One way to distinguish Software Development and Software Architecture Consulting services is to bring them closer to the requirements incumbent on them. Requirements are descriptions of what a particular system must perform – they reflect the client’s need for that specific digital product. There are functional requirements and non-functional requirements.

• Functional requirements: are about what functions the software should have, how it should react to specific inputs, how it will behave in certain situations, and even establishing what the system should not do. An example would be to say that the software must be able to issue bills or that it should allow the user to subscribe to a service. The construction of functional requirements is the responsibility of software developers and, therefore, they are met by the Development service.
• Non-functional requirements: are related to specific qualities and restrictions that the software must meet. There are product requirements such as reliability, efficiency, portability, usability and performance; organizational requirements such as delivery, implementation, and standards; and external requirements such as interoperability, ethics, security, privacy, and legislation. An example of a non-functional requirement is when we say that the software must have an Uptime (availability time) of 99%, or that it must be able to support up to 10,000 concurrent users, or that it must ensure that sensitive data is encrypted to prevent its disclosure. When there is a challenging non-functional requirement that needs planning to be done, then we need Architecture Consulting.

May startups and established companies need both services?

 The differences between the professionals of these services and the requirements with which they work show us that Software Development is suitable for new digital products or services for companies and startups, and also for expanding existing software (which need new features to be developed) in controlled environments. This service has specific methods to help refine functional requirements, define them from a user experience perspective, and quickly deliver the new functions desired.

However, when the problem involves a bottleneck or point of failure in an existing software, or even a major technical challenge at the beginning of a new product, before development it is necessary to analyze and strategically think about the ideal set of technologies and tools for this situation. In this case, Software Architecture Consulting is responsible for providing the answer.

This means that this service will rarely be offered to an early stage startup, as in these cases the innovation is usually not in technology, but in a business model. Now, when the startup starts to grow and is not prepared for this – which sometimes happens exponentially and quickly – it may need Consulting to evolve its technology, increase the capacity for new users, new transactions, to absorb peak usage moments or even to reduce costs caused by vertical scaling.

Examples of real cases

Therefore, the Software Architecture Consulting client, in most cases, already has a digital product in operation, but it needs more than just evolve the functions of that product; it also needs to correct flaws and bottlenecks that already exist or will exist in the future.

Flaws that already exist may be related, for example, to technology gaps. In one of our recent clients, we were called on to help understand why the internal management web system frequently crashes, shutting down the operation and generating losses. The problem was in the database that became incompatible with the updates of the operating system, causing pool connections to crash and, consequently, the whole system crashing. The incompatibility was low-level and difficult to diagnose: it had to do with how the database used the server’s processor. To solve the issue, our team of architects presented some options and guided the client’s team in executing the fix.

Regarding bottlenecks that will exist in the future, these are usually linked to the business growth forecast. We served a client of a financial institution who knew that its number of digital transactions would increase and the software it owned would not support it. Our architects suggested a new stack (set of technologies), including not only the exchange of the programming language, but also of the entire architecture – migrating from monolith to microservice, and with a phased roadmap for the inclusion of API Gateway, Load Balancing, Tracing, Logging and Queues solutions. Each one of these solutions becomes necessary as the company continues to grow, and in this case, our development team was called upon to apply these changes.

Specific teams for each service

It is also worth emphasizing how different the teams in these two services are. At SoftDesign, the Software Development team is composed of developers, designers, testers, product owners and scrum masters, who build software and improve digital products and services using agile methods. In Software Architecture Consulting, the client has a dedicated project architect who makes a diagnostic chart, identifying solutions and planning execution. This can be the responsibility of the SoftDesign team or the client’s own team.

The architect who is working in Consulting also holds frequent meetings with our other architects to explore the issue and exchange knowledge. In other words, the client has access to our entire pool of architects, each with their specific experiences, who can contribute in different ways to the solution of the issue.

Now that you know the best service for your needs, just fill out the form to request a contact from a consultant.

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At SoftDesign, User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) Design are present in all services, but with different purposes. So what are the occasions when the ideal solution to the design issue is Product Conception? Which ones require UX Design Consulting?

Two services, two purposes

Product Conception aims at exploring ideas, better understanding users, identifying features, and choosing technologies. Through Product Conception, the digital product is designed, focusing on the issue it solves and on how it will generate value.

The Product Conception team is multidisciplinary, made up of product managers, product owners, architects, and designers. Together with the client, they apply Design Thinking techniques, carry out user research, determine Value Proposition, define personas and user journeys, and plan the construction of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

In UX Design Consulting, the designer dedicated to the project diagnoses usability problems in existing software to suggest improvements. Based on a heuristic analysis, the professional designs and presents new design suggestions.

Another possibility for the application of Consulting is in the creation of a new UI design for a digital product when the designer researches with potential users to understand the context of use. A design proposal is delivered to the client, who can develop the solution internally or continue the work with our team.

In both cases above, the designer holds frequent meetings with the other designers in the company to explore the problem and exchange knowledge. Thus, the client has access to our entire pool of UX/UI designers who can contribute, each with their own expertise, in a different way to the solution.

So Conception is only for startups, right?

No. Startups benefit from this service because it offers the development of new digital solutions and their business models, helping in the structuring necessary to effectively start software development.

However, established companies that are creating new solutions on existing platforms or systems may need Product Conception to think about this new part. For example, an internal software that manages sales needs to meet a new customer control need in the sales department.

Furthermore, Product Conception can be essential in a digital transformation strategy, since it requires the development of Product Thinking, that is, product-oriented thinking – which helps to transform needs into practical solutions to be prioritized and delivered. Here is an example.

One of our partners in the benefits card area (food vouchers, transport vouchers, etc.) had an internal management system that controlled the balance of each client (company) and its employees. This information was visible internally, but could not be accessed by clients: in other words, for each company to know its balance and confirm its transactions, it was necessary to call our partner. In short, the service’s end-user could not learn about their status and the status of their employees digitally.

Through Product Conception, our partner understood that it could not simply grant visibility to the system, as the user journeys and objectives of internal operating users were completely different from those of external users: our partner’s employee needs to control the balance of one hundred clients, while each of these clients only wants to know their own balance. In other words, the company already had the database, the structure, and the system – and was able to use this base. However, for this new audience/persona, it was necessary to think about how they would access the platform, understand it, their issues and needs, among others.

What about UX Design Consulting, is it only for existing products?

Mostly. This is because our Consulting services are always oriented to solve problems. The main objective of UX Design Consulting is to solve usability issues and those related to the experience of using a digital product or service.

Such problems can be: users do not understand the system; they complain that the platform is difficult to use; people delete the app because it is confusing, etc. Therefore, the client needs a study that analyzes how this usability and interface can be modified and improved.

However, in rare cases, UX and UI Consulting can be used to propose the usability and interface of a new product.  If the entrepreneur has an idea already conceived, already knows the business model, has already designed the flows, and has his own development team, he may need a design specialist to think about the experience of use.

For example, we recently provided Product Conception services for a partner. His idea matured and it was already possible to develop the software, but he did not have all the necessary financial support – he was looking for investors. With the available value, however, he opted for UX Design Consulting to already create the interface, think about the product’s usability and develop high-fidelity navigable prototypes. Thus, it was possible to materialize his idea further to present it to potential investors, which facilitated its sale.

Other cases

In Product Conception, we think of a digital product or service under different aspects: value proposition, business model, design, functional structure, technical structure, software architecture, among others. In UX Design Consulting, we only look at Design, for journeys and experiences of using the solution.

Now that you know the best service for your needs, just request contact from a consultant.

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