More and more organisations are attempting to implement Agile in order to implement their strategies, improve return on investments and to get their products to market faster than their competitor in an ever decreasing window of opportunity.

Many organisations are throwing traditional waterfall methods out the window due to poor success rates.   My concern with this and my experience has shown that far too many organisations do not know the cause of failure of the waterfall method.  Lessons learned have no meaning to an organisation and so the same mistakes are repeated project after project.  This is not only a waste of resources but a huge demotivating factor for those few centres of excellence found in organisations.  There is never time to plan in quality but always time for rework.  There is never time to gather lessons learned except to jot down the symptoms using a template and archiving the content.  Before embarking on the next latest fashionable method, conduct a proper lessons learned workshop, using an experienced facilitator, to elicit the true causes without the blame game and scapegoat mentality.  All best practice methods create success.

I love Agile as it suits my temperament, my attitude, my mind-set and therefore, my work ethic.  The Agile project management framework and the Agile principles can be incorporated on any project, programme or any operational work, in any industry.  I would highly recommend that regardless of the type of organisation or industry you are in, that Agile is the way to go.  My first experience of Agile was in 2002 and 15 years later I still see the good, the bad and the ugly.  Implementing Agile in an organisation requires a complete a deep dive of the leadership style, the culture, and the processes and people capability. People capability not only refers to knowledge, experience, attitude and skill but also to emotional intelligence and emotional maturity.

Agile principles are focused on interaction, engagement, collaboration, trust as well as open and honest communication between all relevant stakeholders including the customer.  Agile principles are focused on individual and team empowerment.  For empowerment to be effective, individuals will require the knowledge, experience, skill and authority to make decisions.  These empowered individuals and teams are self-organised, self-disciplined and self-motivated and take ownership and accountability for technical excellence.  Technical excellence is a must.  Technical excellence allows for adaptability and reliability and therefore, agility.  Technical excellence allows for a change-driven approach where the team welcome change.   Change allows the customer to adapt to market demand quickly in order to take advantage of the small window of opportunity.  The leader of an Agile team takes on a servant leadership style were coaching, mentoring and conflict resolution takes place in a creative environment that is conducive to absolute focused and sustainable value delivery.  Progress and performance is measured by the value delivered at very regular intervals.

If you are thinking of Agile, then I suggest you embark on this journey with a small team first. There is nothing like prototyping.  Allow for exploration and continuous improvement. Conduct effective facilitated retrospectives in order to learn from every single iteration. More importantly is incorporating those lessons learned, back into the organisation structure and culture for small incremental improvements.  Success that is sustainable comes from continuous improvement.

Agile is not a silver bullet.  Success comes from having courage, persistence, diligence, modesty, commitment, capability and a having a real connectedness.