Why Do Organizations Adopt Agile?

What’s the secret mantra for organizational success in today’s age? An ability to cope with the disruptive market conditions and ever-increasing competition.  

For most organizations, this means a complete transformation from old processes and tools to new age frameworks and methodologies that help bring the focus back to developing better products, ensuring shorter time to market, satisfied customers and a happier workforce that eventually leads to better ROI and hence survival in tough markets. And the one ideology that provides these solutions---Agile! 

What is Agile? 

In this age of digital transformation, where things need to be done at lightning speed in order to succeed, organizations want teams that are high performing and predictable, churning out products that meet customer expectations and timelines. Agile is an embodiment of this speed, enabling high performance to frequently release working software to production.

There are many words to describe Agile—framework, process, concept. But more than anything, Agile is a philosophy, a culture change that follows the iterative and incremental approach to development and ensures better adaptability, better value and more satisfied customers.  

The creators of the Agile Manifesto—the bible of Agile, came up with the twelve principles that would revolutionize software development.  

1. Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software. 
2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage. 
3. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale. 
4. Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project. 
5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done. 
6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation. 
7. Working software is the primary measure of progress. 
8. Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely. 
9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility. 
10. Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential. 
11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams. 
12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behaviour accordingly. 

Top Reasons Why Organizations Are Adopting Agile  

• Increased Efficiency:  

Why do organizations adopt agile? To overrun old processes that choke efficiency is one of the primary reasons. Breaking down work into chunks helps improve focus and subsequently, efficiency.  

Efficiency is also improved by eliminating unnecessary processes and boosting productivity.

• Shorter Time-To-Market:  
  

Since Agile encourages testing in parallel, bugs are identified early on, giving developers a chance to fix issues almost instantly rather than waiting till the end. 

The Agile methodology is based on faster time to market and when implemented correctly, that is exactly what teams get: a product that has been built on superior quality standards by a distributed team. 

• Improved Quality:  

Why do companies use agile? Because at the end of it all, what defines a company is the product it creates and the value it generates. Agile helps enhance the quality of the product simply because it does not allow any compromises on the quality.

The team is expected to deliver a high quality and potentially releasable product within the time frame. The agile methods of cross functional teams, continuous improvement, pair programming, and test-driven development ensure this.  

• Happier Customers:

Agile customers are happy campers because they are taken along in the journey. 

Agile development emphasizes on complete transparency between the team and the stakeholders. The product developed is rooted and refined as per the needs and expectations of the customer.

In fact, development progresses as requirements evolve through collaboration. Along with this, fast response times to customer needs and queries, greater flexibility and potentially shippable products of high quality ensure happy customers.

At the heart of agile development is testing and this ensures continuous improvement and superior quality product.

• Faster ROI:  

Time is money, and no other product framework understands this better than Agile. Leaner teams, faster development and faster shipping of working products ensures faster return on investment.

Agile reduces cost while ensuring constant or increased returns. Agile practices such as XP and Scrum have been known to be low cost practices that ensure high rate of returns.  

• Satisfied Employees:  

Satisfied employees work better and this increase value generation and bottom line margins.

Employees are equal contributors in the process of Product development in the Agile process. This increases their sense of ownership and accountability, leading to a greater sense of accomplishment. 

Agile also encourages employees to be empowered, rather than being order takers, leading to greater satisfaction. This coupled with the fact that Agile encourages constant iteration and faster guest feedback, means that employees can see their work being deployed in production, at regular frequency, leading to a greater sense of accomplishment. 

Quotes on sayings by top industry leaders 

Almost three-quarters (71%) of organizations report using Agile approaches sometimes, often, or always--Project Management Institute 

“…the agile movement in software is part of a larger movement towards more humane and dynamic workplaces in the 21st century.” 
Rowan Bunning (Australia’s first Scrum Master)

Agile is an attitude, not a technique with boundaries. An attitude has no boundaries, so we wouldn't ask 'can I use agile here', but rather 'how would I act in the agile way here?' or 'how agile can we be, here?' - Alistair Cockburn 

Agility is the ability to adapt and respond to change … agile organizations view change as an opportunity, not a threat-- Jim Highsmith 

“Agile Manifesto.” It declared the following values: people over processes; products that actually work over documenting what that product is supposed to do; collaborating with customers over negotiating with them; and responding to change over following a plan. Scrum is the framework I built to put those values into practice. There is no methodology.” 
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time 

Is Agile feasible for you? 

Agile is no longer a methodology just employed by start-ups and small enterprises. It has now hit mainstream and is becoming the methodology of choice for implementing complex projects in large organizations.  

But how would you know if Agile is the right fit for your organization? If your answer is ‘yes’ for the following questions, then you are at the right stage to go in for Agile adoption. 

• The top management in your organization has accepted the idea of Agile adoption. 
• Your teams are co-located and are enthusiastic about working closely with each other to ensure project success. 
• Your customers and suppliers are ready to get their products developed the Agile way. 
• Your entire organization is ready to change the existing culture and adopt an agile mind-set. 
• You are trying to become a product oriented organization.

How to make a successful Agile journey?

An organization cannot become truly agile by just following agile processes and tools. What is needed to become truly agile is a change in the mind-set. An agile mind-set will lead the way in identifying the right mechanisms to get there; rather than the other way around.  

The core of Agile starts from people. Agile is all about getting people to behave and think differently. And to bring about this transformation we need coaches who understand what it takes to help overcome the barriers to truly adopting agile. Coaching and mentoring play important roles in helping organizations make this transition. 

Here are some key points that will help streamline the agile transformation journey and help avoid failures: 

1. Get top management buy-in 
2. Go slow with scaling 
3. Get the best talent to guide the transformation 
4. Help your employees assimilate an Agile mindset 

Final Thoughts: 

The adoption of Agile has increased as more and more companies realise the potential of what good customer experience can do for their business.  

What are the top two reasons for adopting agile in an organization? While there are much more than just two, the primary reasons for agile adoption are most definitely cost reduction and faster ROI, both of which are much needed to survive in these tough times.