AGILE Sustainability

Practitioner: Business Transitions to Agile Practices by David Varvel

August 06, 2021 Hou Yifeng Season 1 Episode 6
AGILE Sustainability
Practitioner: Business Transitions to Agile Practices by David Varvel
Show Notes

Welcome to Episode 6 of AGILE Sustainability. This is a very special episode as we are going to dive deeper into the Software Agile Practices and explore the implications of Sustainability Transitions for businesses. 

David Varvel, who's a super experienced software practitioner on Agile practices, will take us on the journey of transforming businesses with Agile practices. He has abundant experience in applying Agile methodology in startups and large enterprises. In these projects, he witnessed the challenges that businesses faced while adopting Agile and how to overcome these challenges. Similar to Agile practices, sustainability introduces disruptive changes to business models and requires businesses to adapt quickly to survive.

The topics in this podcast are:

  • 01m08s: Introduction on David's experiences on Agile
  • 03m23s: Benefits and Motivations for businesses to adopt Agile
  • 05m54s: An Example on Agile Practices delivering value for businesses
  • 09m54s: Challenges for businesses to adopt Agile
  • 12m41s: Mindset Shifts when introducing Agile
  • 15m13s: Scale new practices like Agile within an organization
  • 19m53s: Transferrable lessons from adopting Agile to Sustainability


One of the highlights from David's sharing is to be mindful of the conflicts between new and old practices during the transition. In order to scale new practices in the face of resistance, it's important to protect the seedling of change until it can withstand external hostility. One possible solution is to create a new environment to grow the team with new practices and to build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that demonstrates the benefits of new practices. Subsequently, the seedling team and the MVP can serve as an example for future teams to learn and scale the new practices.

Find out the topics to be explored at https://www.agilesustainability.org/

We would like to hear from you at podcast@agilesustainability.org
Reach out to us for any questions or challenges you face in adopting sustainability solutions.

Music by Wataboi from Pixabay