In today's digital era, organizations of all sizes and in all sectors are opting for agile ways of working, with an aim to gain speed, flexibility and responsiveness required to remain competitive. It is imperative to understand that an organization is less likely to accomplish successful agile transformation only by following a set of agile structures. In fact, an agile transformation needs complete cultural shift across structures, processes and teams.
Following are the most common reasons why agile transformation fails.
Not monitoring your current performance
For any organization undergoing agile transformation, it is important to conduct an as-is audit. Assessing your current processes and practices will help you figure out if there are any problems that your transformation strategy needs to address. Additionally, it helps you identify how much your employees know about agile and how it applies to particular departments, responsibilities and roles of team members.
If you do not perform this audit prior to beginning your journey for agile transformation, it would get challenging for you to evaluate the impact of any initiative taken since you do not have benchmarking statistics for comparison.
Sticking to a single approach
Continuous inspection and iteration is key to successful agile foundation. Whether you are planning for web or mobile product development, don't hesitate to mix methods from diverse agile frameworks to end up with an approach that is customized to your needs. Implementing processes that do not lead you towards your goals, and support your needs and constraints can have adverse effect on your business performance and make it difficult for you to adopt agile methodology.
It is also important to remember that different departments might be working in different environments and fulfilling different demands, so asking all your teams to work on the same framework would not deliver the highest levels of performance. Try and implement different variations of agile approach as per your requirements.
Not providing your team with the skills they need
While undergoing agile transformation for web or mobile application development, it is important to deliver required support to the staff. If you do not have a training plan to ensure your team has knowledge and skills required to implement agile approach, you would not get desired outcomes.
Ensure that your training plan addresses each of your organization - from management to project managers. A one-size-fits-all approach would not work for training and you need to craft relevant training activities for your audience.
Going for full adoption
It is advisable that you include a trail period in your agile transformation schedule. If you do not do so, you will identify any serious issues after your organization has adopted the approach. At that point, significant amount of time, money and efforts might be required to resolve these issues.
Like trial period, it is equally important to choose the right trial group. If you select a team that is not open to work collaboratively, you might have to spend significant time resolving conflicts and removing internal barriers than optimizing the approach itself.
By avoiding these problems, you get off to the best possible start. Moreover, a prudent approach will also increase the rate at which you see returns for your investment in agile.
Following are the most common reasons why agile transformation fails.
Not monitoring your current performance
For any organization undergoing agile transformation, it is important to conduct an as-is audit. Assessing your current processes and practices will help you figure out if there are any problems that your transformation strategy needs to address. Additionally, it helps you identify how much your employees know about agile and how it applies to particular departments, responsibilities and roles of team members.
If you do not perform this audit prior to beginning your journey for agile transformation, it would get challenging for you to evaluate the impact of any initiative taken since you do not have benchmarking statistics for comparison.
Sticking to a single approach
Continuous inspection and iteration is key to successful agile foundation. Whether you are planning for web or mobile product development, don't hesitate to mix methods from diverse agile frameworks to end up with an approach that is customized to your needs. Implementing processes that do not lead you towards your goals, and support your needs and constraints can have adverse effect on your business performance and make it difficult for you to adopt agile methodology.
It is also important to remember that different departments might be working in different environments and fulfilling different demands, so asking all your teams to work on the same framework would not deliver the highest levels of performance. Try and implement different variations of agile approach as per your requirements.
Not providing your team with the skills they need
While undergoing agile transformation for web or mobile application development, it is important to deliver required support to the staff. If you do not have a training plan to ensure your team has knowledge and skills required to implement agile approach, you would not get desired outcomes.
Ensure that your training plan addresses each of your organization - from management to project managers. A one-size-fits-all approach would not work for training and you need to craft relevant training activities for your audience.
Going for full adoption
It is advisable that you include a trail period in your agile transformation schedule. If you do not do so, you will identify any serious issues after your organization has adopted the approach. At that point, significant amount of time, money and efforts might be required to resolve these issues.
Like trial period, it is equally important to choose the right trial group. If you select a team that is not open to work collaboratively, you might have to spend significant time resolving conflicts and removing internal barriers than optimizing the approach itself.
By avoiding these problems, you get off to the best possible start. Moreover, a prudent approach will also increase the rate at which you see returns for your investment in agile.
