6 Enablers That Will Impact Your Agile Implementation

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The 6 enablers that will impact your Agile implementation. Have you got them right?

To cope with the challenges of an uncertain and complicated future, companies globally are transforming their ways of working, seeking increased speed, responsiveness, and a more engaged and satisfied workforce. Many turn to Agile ways of working or related frameworks but struggle to see significant progress towards their transformation objectives, even if the organizations’ Agile maturity improves.

The reason Agile alone does not work is that changing a company’s ways of working needs to be part of a broader, more holistic approach tackling the full set of organizational enablers, such as strategy, organizational structure, culture, leadership, measurement frameworks and technology. The business impact can be reduced or blocked entirely if these enablers are not considered.

Let's look at each of these in more detail.

1️⃣Strategy to Action

Introducing Agile will not deliver success without a clear strategic direction for the organization. Teams and individual employees run the risk of striving to deliver outcomes that are not aligned with the overall direction. Resources are wasted on misaligned initiatives, affecting the bottom line. Even if they are pumping out work at a rapid pace, employees can feel unvalued, demotivated, or simply confused.

A clear and effective strategy, well-articulated by leadership, provides an organization with a purpose and serves as the starting point for a conversation about how teams’ work fits into the larger scheme of things. The right planning mechanisms can then be put in place to break down the strategy effectively into the work done in business units.

Example:

An energy sector client who implemented Agile continued to struggle with transformation efforts because teams lacked a clear understanding of the organization's strategic direction, which made it difficult to align their daily work with the overall objectives. Without clear prioritization their efforts were unfocused, leading to inefficiencies and a slow pace of transformation.

A solution based on Quarterly Delivery Cycles (QDC) supported by Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) was introduced to address the alignment challenges. The QDC approach ensured the organization's goals were regularly reviewed and updated, allowing quick adjustments in response to changes. Meanwhile, OKRs guided each team's efforts towards achieving specific, measurable results that contributed to the overall strategy. Their teams improved the way they prioritized and delivered projects, and the overall organization saw faster progress toward its goals.

2️⃣Organization and Team Structure

Traditional hierarchies can hinder an organization’s transformation by impeding responsiveness and agility. Bureaucratic structures with excessive oversight and slow decision-making create barriers to the mindset, behavior, and practical change needed to get the greatest impact from Agile.

Even in flatter organizations with delegated decision making, the composition of teams is crucial. Teams using Agile need to be redesigned cross-functionally to reduce hand-offs and dependencies, enhance decision-making and adaptability to change, and ultimately achieve their target customer or business outcomes.

As teams become more cross-functional, challenges can emerge around retaining and developing technical talent. Agile team leads or product owners may not have the technical expertise to help develop their team members’ careers. As a result, organizational structures need to cater for “disciplines” or “chapters”, with specialised career paths separate from traditional managerial roles.

Example:

During the COVID-19 pandemic, an Australian retailer attempting to grow its digital business faced complex internal processes and red tape, hindering its ability to adapt and scale operations quickly. The retailer's existing operating model was siloed, affecting responsiveness to external events, product availability, supply chain management, and customer service.

A new operating model was implemented, and cross-functional teams were formed to break down silos, with the autonomy to change priorities as needed to manage the rapid changes in orders, deliveries, and in-store customer foot traffic due to the pandemic. This solution led to a 72% surge in employee efficiency, which factors in faster completion of tasks, better quality outputs, and more effective use of resources.

3️⃣Culture and Behavior

A successful organizational transformation combines Agile with a culture built on a foundation of three pillars: trust, data-driven decision-making, and a balance between speed and quality. Creating cultural change is difficult, but with the right leadership and persistence it can be guided in the right direction.

A low-trust culture breeds and feeds on micromanagement, stifled creativity, and poor collaboration. In contrast, a foundation of trust fosters transparency, where information flows freely, and mistakes are seen as learning opportunities. This creates a safe space for experimentation and innovation. Teams feel comfortable taking risks, knowing they have their peers' and leaders' support, leading to faster iterations, higher quality work, and ultimately a more successful organization.

Data-driven decision-making is essential. Without it, there is a tendency for teams to become anchored to their initial assumptions, disregarding new evidence that may be crucial. By embracing a data-driven approach, teams can establish quick feedback loops that are important for fine-tuning their efforts, leading to improved iterations and less wasted effort, allowing them to objectively track progress and assess the impact of changes made, and turbocharging the impact of Agile.

While rapid development cycles are attractive, prioritizing speed alone can lead to outputs riddled with defects. This frustrates stakeholders and creates rework, ultimately slowing progress. On the other hand, a singular focus on quality can cause organizations to miss deadlines and result in delays and a lack of responsiveness to changing needs or market conditions. Balancing both quality and speed results in optimal delivery of business value over the long term.

Example:

An engagement with a leading global airline, known for its impeccable customer service, showcases this principle. The airline was pushing out new initiatives to its customer base at a rapid pace, but customer satisfaction was declining as expectations around service were not being met. Employees were feeling the pressure to deliver quickly and cutting corners as a result. With our help, through a combination of communication, coaching and incentives, the airline managed to reset its culture to balance speed to market with quality, and the slide in customer satisfaction was halted.

4️⃣Leadership

Beyond their role in guiding and reinforcing culture, leadership mindset and behavior plays a huge part in increasing the effectiveness of an Agile transformation.

Leaders who punish experimentation or celebrate individual “stars” over collaboration stifle innovation and teamwork. This demotivates teams and impedes learning, ultimately stalling transformation efforts.

Supportive leadership, however, acts as a catalyst for change. These leaders create a safe space where teams feel empowered to experiment, collaborate, and learn. They provide resources, coaching, and a sense of psychological safety necessary for successful transformation.

Traditional leadership development often focuses on a single area of expertise, falling short in today's dynamic environment. Instead, "T-shaped" leaders are needed – individuals with deep expertise in their field and broader skills to manage diverse teams. They must be multi-dimensional and communicate a clear vision while recognising and valuing the unique contributions within cross-functional teams.

Example:

In the hospitality industry, guest experience is of utmost importance. A global hospitality client faced challenges due to evolving customer expectations. The client’s leadership had a traditional, narrow focus on individual expertise, which made it difficult to foster the innovation and collaboration required to meet these new challenges.

To address this issue, a leadership development program was implemented, which aimed to shift the company's leadership approach towards a T-shaped model. The program encouraged a values-driven culture and promoted broad capability growth while also upskilling high-potential employees, thereby closing critical individual and organizational capability gaps. This shift in leadership mindset and development built a pipeline of next-generation leaders and enabled the organization to navigate the dynamic, competitive hospitality landscape effectively.

5️⃣Measurement Frameworks

Traditional measurement approaches focus on individual performance and behaviors, and private, infrequent conversations. In an Agile organization with teams aligned to business or customer outcomes, team outcomes are what really matter. Persisting with traditional measurement can block collaboration through incentivising individual achievement and a lack of transparency.

Clear, well-defined success measures aligned with the business or customer outcomes and linked to the overall organizational strategy help teams and individuals focus on the right things and better understand the overall impact they are having. Using common, consistent metrics and making them visible for all on a continuous basis ensures transparency and a shared understanding.

Example:

In the case of a Singaporean financial institution undergoing an organizational transformation, the company lacked visibility into team performance and progress. This hindered its ability to identify areas for improvement and adapt its approach effectively.

A new set of metrics was introduced to provide leadership and teams with more visibility, linked to the company strategy and covering team productivity and efficiency. With a clear line of sight on team performance, the financial institution could track progress in smaller, iterative cycles, facilitating rapid identification and resolution of issues. By connecting individual and team success metrics to the broader company goals, employees felt more engaged and motivated, contributing to the overall success of the transformation.

6️⃣Technological Enablers

Seamless collaboration is essential for Agile, but keeping teams connected at scale or across geographies can pose challenges. Without the right tools, geographically dispersed teams can become isolated, leading to communication and progress lags.

Collaboration tools foster real-time communication and information sharing regardless of location, ensuring everyone is on the same page, promoting transparency and a sense of shared purpose.

Example:

As part of a UK public sector client’s efforts to improve the pace and quality of delivery across its DevOps teams, the organization faced challenges around adapting to a hybrid work model with physically distributed teams.

We introduced our in-house tool, Baci, allowing issues to be identified, measured, and rectified quickly, supporting continuous improvement at scale. Using Baci helped bridge the physical distance between teams, fostering real-time communication and information sharing, and empowering the organization to leverage diverse perspectives and strengths across its workforce to drive continuous improvement and innovation. For example, through an organization-wide retrospective, they approved a significant software streamlining plan from senior stakeholders after months of delay.

Bringing it all together – a real world example.

A partnership with a major Australian mining company demonstrates how a successful transformation brings together all the organizational enablers. The company aimed to improve global operational effectiveness and increase engagement among staff and customers.

By collaborating with the company's leadership, a transformation initiative introducing Agile and addressing strategy, structure, culture, leadership, measurement, and technology was implemented. The company improved strategic planning and data-driven decision-making by adopting Quarterly Delivery Cycles (QDC) and Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). It redesigned its organizational structure, put in place new expectations around leadership, and implemented technology tools to increase collaboration agility and transparency.

This led to the mining company becoming more dynamic and responsive. The company achieved a 66% increase in processing speed and realised cost savings by streamlining its technology use. Staff satisfaction also increased, with more engagement and motivation from teams. While Agile provided a framework for rapid development and adaptability, truly unlocking its business impact required a holistic approach to transformation.

Learn more about how ADAPTOVATE can assist in delivering positive business results through transformation.

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6 Enablers That Will Impact Your Agile Implementation

The 6 enablers that will impact your Agile implementation. Have you got them right?

Bringing it all together – a real world example.

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