#84-Agile Beyond Software

Is agile solely or primarily a software development paradigm?  Not at all.  This episode will give examples of agile being used in widely different areas of business, and suggest how you might try applying its principles to what you do.

Transcript

Agile Beyond Software 

Because the Agile Manifesto initially grew out of frustration that software development teams had with the way that their projects were managed, people often think of agile as being relegated solely to the software development industry. 

But the truth is that the core concepts of agile, namely responding effectively to change, favoring collaboration over firm contract negotiations, early delivery of value, and constant validation allowing for early adjustment, can be applied to a wide variety of human activities apart from the creation of software. 

A good example of this is marketing. If you've ever seen the program Mad Men you know that marketing campaigns in the past usually involved extensive planning, lengthy focus group sessions, and months in execution. But modern marketing teams are agile in that they use short sprints to test their proposed messaging, they quickly iterate over the results of those tests, and respond to market forces as they evolve.  Agile marketing is not prescriptive, it is responsive, and based on the realities encountered in the agora.

Education, which is near and dear to my heart, is also becoming increasingly agile. Teachers are experimenting with innovative ideas, such as teaching from the back of the room, frequent validation with students, chunking content into microlearnings, and a wide variety of techniques that have largely been based on student feedback. Especially in adult education we find that we must allow students to participate actively in the way that they are taught, and this means that we must be constantly responsive to them. That is nothing if not agile. 

We could also say similar things about human resources, which in the past involved strict gating procedures and a hierarchy of interviews and scheduled reviews, but today focuses on people-first policies, continuous feedback loops, and lifelong learning. Agile HR responds to the needs of employees as they change, making the employer competitive especially when hiring becomes a seller’s market.

All of this is true because agile is not a fixed process.  I have heard it said that the development of an agile process should itself be an agile process, that it should be tailored to the circumstances that exist in the real world.  Because those circumstances are going to change, every agile process itself has to be open to the possibility of change without creating chaos.

If you’ve been thinking that agile is all about swim lanes and Kanban boards and posting ideas on the conference room wall, you're missing the point.  Those are all tools that can be used poorly or properly to create the realistic responsiveness that makes agile effective.

So, if you are considering that agile might apply to what you do, the best approach is to experiment. Pick a small-to-medium sized project and run a two-to-three week trial where feedback is sought constantly, and then responded to. You will quickly learn what works and what doesn't, and you can build your agile process from there

Remember that what drove the software development industry toward agile was the desire to work smarter, to be able to adapt, and to create real business value reliably.  These principles can apply to anything that people do.