Lynne Cazaly explores how agile is growing in interest and adoption
An agile mindset is about adapting, responding, iterating your services or products - to deliver value to your customer.
Agile has been synonymous with technology and software development projects. But it isn’t limited to technology. Lots of other fields and teams use agile as a way to run their projects.
For some organisations, it might start with the IT department, but then it grows. Other departments are often curious to see how the IT team is working and delivering things of value to customers quickly.
Human Resources
In Human Resources, there’s been an HR Manifesto created not dissimilar to the Agile Manifesto from the last article. HR aims to build engaged workforces, thriving cultures and to help organisations and their leaders better respond to change.
Marketing
Marketers find they can gather data and develop solutions in real time. They can deploy tests quickly, evaluate the results and then rapidly iterate. You could imagine them having lots of different campaigns running at once with new ideas raised and then swiftly launched and tested continuously.
Design, Legal, Finance … have also brought agile to the way they think and work.
In Schools
A movement in education to become more agile is not just about how learning is designed and delivered by teaching teams, but how students can work on projects in their subjects in class. So that’s some agile within an agile environment!
There are examples of agile working in manufacturing, aviation, broadcasting and… I spoke with a winery recently about how they could be more agile in how they respond, adapt and iterate from the grape to the bottle and beyond. Cheers!
Whatever the industry, if things are complex, uncertain or changing rapidly, it’s worth looking at how you can bring agility to the way things gets done.
Customers increasingly want instant products and service and you can’t deliver that using the same old bureaucracy your industry’s been using for the past century. You too have to become more nimble, more agile if you’re going to respond and adapt.
This isn’t just about being more productive or getting more work done; it’s actually about getting more value out of the work you’re doing – so yes, it’s smarter not harder.
As some of the team from Microsoft say, if you have an idea, how quickly can you get that idea out of your head and into the customer’s hands?
With the customer increasingly becoming the boss, it makes you wonder about how you might be able to be more agile… so let’s have a look at that next week!
Lynne Cazaly is an international keynote speaker, author and facilitator.
She is the author of five books including:
• Agile-ish: How to build a culture of agility
• Leader as Facilitator: How to engage, inspire and get work done
• Making Sense: A Handbook for the Future of Work
She works with executives, senior leaders and project teams on their major change and transformation projects. Lynne is an experienced board director and chair and on the Faculty of Thought Leaders Business School. More info at www.lynnecazaly.com
Agile has been synonymous with technology and software development projects. But it isn’t limited to technology. Lots of other fields and teams use agile as a way to run their projects.
For some organisations, it might start with the IT department, but then it grows. Other departments are often curious to see how the IT team is working and delivering things of value to customers quickly.
Human Resources
In Human Resources, there’s been an HR Manifesto created not dissimilar to the Agile Manifesto from the last article. HR aims to build engaged workforces, thriving cultures and to help organisations and their leaders better respond to change.
Marketing
Marketers find they can gather data and develop solutions in real time. They can deploy tests quickly, evaluate the results and then rapidly iterate. You could imagine them having lots of different campaigns running at once with new ideas raised and then swiftly launched and tested continuously.
Design, Legal, Finance … have also brought agile to the way they think and work.
In Schools
A movement in education to become more agile is not just about how learning is designed and delivered by teaching teams, but how students can work on projects in their subjects in class. So that’s some agile within an agile environment!
There are examples of agile working in manufacturing, aviation, broadcasting and… I spoke with a winery recently about how they could be more agile in how they respond, adapt and iterate from the grape to the bottle and beyond. Cheers!
Whatever the industry, if things are complex, uncertain or changing rapidly, it’s worth looking at how you can bring agility to the way things gets done.
Customers increasingly want instant products and service and you can’t deliver that using the same old bureaucracy your industry’s been using for the past century. You too have to become more nimble, more agile if you’re going to respond and adapt.
This isn’t just about being more productive or getting more work done; it’s actually about getting more value out of the work you’re doing – so yes, it’s smarter not harder.
As some of the team from Microsoft say, if you have an idea, how quickly can you get that idea out of your head and into the customer’s hands?
With the customer increasingly becoming the boss, it makes you wonder about how you might be able to be more agile… so let’s have a look at that next week!
This is the third in a series of articles about agile and business agility.
Lynne Cazaly is an international keynote speaker, author and facilitator. She is the author of five books including:
• Agile-ish: How to build a culture of agility
• Leader as Facilitator: How to engage, inspire and get work done
• Making Sense: A Handbook for the Future of Work
She works with executives, senior leaders and project teams on their major change and transformation projects. Lynne is an experienced board director and chair and on the Faculty of Thought Leaders Business School. More info at www.lynnecazaly.com
