Agile is not only about IT

“Ahh. Agile. This is what IT guys are doing. You mean those stand-ups, SoS and OKRs? … Yeah. This is IT.”

Wait.

While Agile is really quite related to “IT world,” it is not “IT only.” Agile originates from IT, but it can cover all parts of a modern company.

Really? Isn’t this too courageous statement? How can Agile help HR? Or Finance? Or Sales? This thing of “Agile everywhere” really sounds like an exaggeration.

Do not worry – this myth about “Agile is only for IT” is widely spread across majority of companies that are somehow adopting Agile. Let’s bust this myth together.

Let me start with following picture showing composition of ANY company. Every company can be sliced to 3 parts: 1) Strategy and Governance (leadership) – sets the mission, vision and “direction” where the company goes 2) Program Execution (product definition and creation) – generates the product, for which customers pay 3) Operations (execution) – all the front-office/back-office processes that keep the company together (HR, Finance, Sales, Procurement, etc…)

For all these 3 parts Agile has a set of well-tuned practices. Let’s have a look at them.

1) Strategy and governance Agile offers a full package of leadership practices for more effective strategy formulation, execution and overall governance.

Well formulated strategy is a key prerequisite for any planning and running your business.

Let's have a closer look on Strategy planning workshop.

The workshop is segmented into 4 distinct areas, in logical order.

• A Space - what is our current situation

• B Space - what is our desired future

• C Space - how will we get there

• D Space - detailed plan

It would be above capacity of this post to describe strategy formulation workshop in deeper detail here. For more information please view this post.

Agile has also full set of practices related to modern "servant leadership." They help leaders to inspire their colleagues to be happy and productive at their workplace. These are:

• inspire purpose

• setup for success

• optimize value flow

• govern for greatness

• innovate

More detailed understanding of these practices can be obtained via dedicated training. You can pick up one here.

2) Program Execution

I do not want to spend too much time about what Agile does in IT. Not in this article. Let me just share a picture showing the interlink of all 3 company segments working alltogether. Strategy determines the “right thing to do.” Backlogs of both “IT teams” and “Operational teams” are fed and prioritized by the business – and executed using Agile methods like “scrum” and kanban.”

3) Operations Entire Agile philosophy is focused on doing things “better, faster and cheaper.” This is also focus of Agile for Operations. There is a whole set of practices focused on visualization, measurements and optimization of processes. For those who are familiar with LEAN manufacturing many terms will be familiar. Because Agile adopted and simplified many LEAN practices.

First we start with visualization of work on KANBAN walls. Showing on cards transactions we are processing – and how big these pieces are. We measure the “throughput” (how many transactions can we process during a day/week/month). We measure “total cycle time” (how long does it take for one transaction to complete) and “total cycle time in backlog” (how long does new transaction waits, until it is picked up for processing?). These metrics help us to look for waste and identify bottlenecks. Removing bottlenecks is especially important, because bottlenecks slow the entire process. We can be whatever efficient – if we have a bottleneck, entire process suffers.

Process optimization is then subject of another LEAN / Agile practice called “Value Stream Mapping.” This is the practice helping to visualize selected process (e.g. purchasing of office equipment, recruitment process, processing invoices/payments, etc..).

We map the entire process and by "visualizing the beast" we suddenly see areas of improvement. Removal of duplicities, illogical loops, long wait-times between steps, and so on.

The team suggests a solution, test it and implement it. And usually with just some small tuning the process efficiency grew from 8% to 30% or even 70% and higher.

Why? How is that possible? I can tell you. It is because of 3 factors. 2 of them are purely “technical” - visualization and collocated workshop. The third (and most essential) is human nature striving to do things better. When you put the right people together, teach them the right techniques, then the magic happens. Tremendous results can be achieved. And the trends of key metrics start looking like that.

And this is why we are here, right? To make our clients more happy, to make our companies more profitable and to have a good feeling of job-well-done. Agile can help with that. It is not only for IT. :-)