Agile Know-How Magazine • Fall 2017
innovation will never successfully embrace Agile principles. An organization that values innovation over efficiency does not yet know what its customers want, or it seeks a new set of customers with unknown needs. It also does not yet know what it needs to do to meet those unknown needs. It relies, instead, on an empirical approach, on forming hypotheses about what customers need and what will satisfy them. It values fast delivery of high quality solutions and values and acts on feedback. Agile approaches help organizations systematically create solutions that test these hypotheses and adapt based on results. tional belief system is being threatened by forces from the outside— an emerging market segment or one that is threatened by digital competitors. Build Agile success here first( see Figure 2).
Recommendation: Understand your organization’ s belief system and choose where to start carefully.
A simple visualization tool, the Agile readiness radar, can help identify areas in the organization that are more ready for change( see Figure 1).
Figure 2- Parts of the organization closest to customers are often the most ready for an Agile approach.
Success in these areas will get attention from other parts of the organization that are also similarly threatened and ready to change. Over time, as more and more parts of the organization become comfortable with the new set of beliefs, Agile change is met with less resistance.
Figure 1- Agile readiness radar
The figure plots the relative priorities of a person or group of people on the 5 dimensions expressed in the beliefs described above. The closer a group of people is to the outer edge of the figure, the more ready it is for the changes that an Agile approach will require. No person or group will be ideally ready in all dimensions, but if they are more unready than ready, a wise person will look for more fertile ground elsewhere.
Large organizations are complex societies with subcultures and pockets of nonconformity. Even small organizations can have subcultures. If you’ re trying to introduce Agile practices into an organization, focus on finding small enclaves where the tradi- agileknowhow. com 13