There is a lot of talk around being an “agile” organization these days. Since COVID began so abruptly last spring, many organizations are reconsidering how they adapt to change, and being “agile” sounds appealing. Leaders are asking their teams to be more agile, but what should teams count on those in a leadership role to do in an Agile organization?
Have you ever wondered where the term “Agile” came from? This word has been thrown around as a buzz word frequently of late. As in: “We need to be Agile,” or “Our organization’s agile approach allows us to be flexible.” This article discusses the origins of Agile, what it is, and our key take-aways about what Agile means.
Agile is actually a collection of frameworks that have their roots in Lean manufacturing. Using Agile, just like Lean, should be part of an overall execution strategy – and should be considered in the right context. If your company has knowledge workers, there is a good chance that some Agile frameworks that are focused on planning and execution and can help visualize capacity, especially when it is hard to “see” work in the form of tangible goods, work-in-progress, or materials.
Given the inevitability of change, creating a static “Waterfall” schedule with all tasks and dependencies fully known at the outset of a project seems antiquated at best. Here is how we recommend generating a tried-and-true Milestone Schedule in an Agile fashion – specifically by creating an Agile Project Backlog.
You have a Project Coordinator and Agile Consulting background, tell us about the importance of those in an organization. Projects are complex by nature. The Project Manager, or Coordinator, plays a key role in pulling the details together and communicating those details. This includes tracking project milestones and due dates, providing support to make sure all project …
“Things are evolving so fast, we don’t know what our needs will be in the next (week, month, quarter).” Things change – and the best laid plans may not always work with what the reality is in your organization. Nothing exemplified this better than the almost overnight onset of the COVID pandemic in March of …
In 2014, Jeff Sutherland published “Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time” – a provocative title that caused many to flock to Agile methodologies, particularly that of Scrum, as a possible panacea for productivity in the workplace. Can it be true? Can Scrum live up to this claim, where so many …
Businesses often wish to re-evaluate how they perform certain operational activities or workflows. In other words, they wish to perform “Process Improvement.” Process Mapping can quickly and effectively define the current state, and align stakeholders to howthe process should be improved. If you have participated in a Process Mapping session before, you realize that detailing out each activity is time consuming, sometimes confusing and all together pretty exhausting!
Alex Jones, a Certified Scaled Agile Program Consultant with over 20 years of Agile and Lean Transformation experience at a large semiconductor manufacturer, recently presented on how companies can use Agile in non-software related applications such as product development, knowledge work, or service related businesses. Here are the take-aways for companies who know something about Agile …
