Businesses in various industries have adopted Agile, and its popularity continues to grow. However, the hype over agility has fostered fake agile among companies that misunderstand its purpose or ignore its applications.
Only businesses that can innovate, adapt swiftly to change, and meet the constantly changing demands of their users will survive and prosper in a technology landscape that is rapidly changing. Being Agile is one of the crucial ways businesses can achieve this. Many companies, however, fail to see the true significance and benefits of Agile and claim to use agile processes as just marketing gimmicks.
Fake agile is an unsuccessful attempt that fails to embrace the principles of true agile and does not deliver success. There is an incomplete alignment with the principles and values of true agile. Here are a few aspects that separate true agile practitioners from imposters.
Agile is viewed as a cure-all; however, enterprises with inadequate knowledge of agile are at complete odds and are certain to encounter a fake agile in their practice. In addition to a well-defined strategy, a solid way to prevent fake agile is to ensure it is the right fit for the business.
This requires a mindset shift and transitioning to a new set of practices and a change in the attitude around agile values and principles. At the same time, a CIO needs to ensure that there is adequate leadership commitment across the company as a whole which leads to the successful enablement of agile practitioners.
Also Read: Four Key Indicators of a Fake Agile
Often enterprises focus on granular facets of agile rather than the actual content resulting in the loss of true agile principles. Organizations often focus on going through the motions turning a blind eye toward achieving business results.
Agile practitioners need to adhere to business goals and value realization along with the methodology and implementation of this technology. They also need to monitor results every three to six months.
Businesses struggle to implement consistent, agile practices when the team lacks a dedicated product owner creating hurdles in meeting predictable delivery goals. CIOs need to ensure that they have a skilled agile practitioner and a product owner who thoroughly understand their roles.
To overcome this issue, organizations need to ensure adequate training is given to the team and incorporate an agile coach to provide proper guidance. CIOs can spend time with the team members to understand how they function and operate agile practices.
Metrics can be misleading at times. One of the most evident signs of fake agile is when an IT team focuses on team productivity KPIs rather than the predictable delivery accompanying each release. CIOs need to ensure that the IT department is consistent in business goals and objectives.
Enterprises also need to ensure that feedback received from the customer is being implemented by the IT department and the CIO is ensuring effective two-way communication.
Fresh feedback should be integrated from internal stakeholders and customers to deliver value moving forward to the next value-measured priority. This strategy ensures that the product backlog aligns with the strategic objectives and product roadmaps of the enterprise.
Also Read: Three KPI Blunders IT Leaders Make Due to Metrics Inaccuracies
Agile’s language and functions establish a strong foundation. Hence, enterprises need to equip their agile teams with tools designed to optimize and accelerate activities. These practices enable the teams to focus on customer value and feedback. Agile practitioners also need to utilize automation to streamline the delivery of quality software. This ensures the tools are in place to facilitate planning and adapting plans across multiple teams.
Agile practitioners need to necessitate and adopt the cultural shift need a solid understanding of more than one agile approach. Simultaneously, CIOs need to empower the employees by ingraining agile values in the company’s culture.
As per a recent report by CertiProf, “Agile Adoption Report 2022”, 59% of the organizations are firmly committed to adopting agile values, while 56% are implementing exponential growth initiatives. While true agile is beneficial, fake practices can create setbacks that impact businesses negatively. Therefore, effective implementation is crucial to becoming a solid agile organization.
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Apoorva Kasam is a Global News Correspondent with OnDot Media. She has done her master’s in Bioinformatics and has 12+ months of experience in clinical and preclinical data management. She is a content-writing enthusiast, and this is her first stint writing articles on business technology. She has covered a wide array of crucial industry insights like Blockchain, strategic planning, data analytics, supply chain management, governance, compliance, and the latest industry trends. Her ideal and digestible writing style displays the current challenges, and relevant mitigation strategies businesses can look forward to. She has a keen interest in the latest enterprise trends like digital transformation, cloud, and enterprise resource planning. She looks for minute details, while her excellent language skills help her deliver a crisp-looking, niche-specific message through her articles. She is looking forward to exploring her writing styles and portraying her thoughts that can help enhance organizational effectiveness, business performance, and sustainability. Apart from writing, she enjoys spending time with her pet and reading oncology publications.
