There are a number of reasons why an Agile mindset is paramount on your Agile journey. Here are our top three:
- An Agile mindset helps you be Agile while doing Agile. Well-known frameworks provide great tools and techniques to help teams execute in an agile manner. However, an Agile mindset is key to being agile, resulting in sustainable agility manifested through people, not processes.
- An Agile mindset allows you to tailor methodologies for your reality. Agile processes will and should continue to evolve as organizations learn more and build agile capability. An Agile mindset gives you the flexibility to blend agile methods and even invent new frameworks to maximize collaboration and innovation.
- An Agile mindset helps bring out the best in your teams and organizations. Having an agile mindset is synonymous with a culture of continuous learning. Learning agility helps people reach their potential and is a critical ingredient for business agility.
When Agile is done right, all parts of the organization are continuously exploring how to add more value to customers. This not only creates meaning for those doing the work and delights those for whom the work is done: it results in generous returns to the organization itself.
In a study published in the Journal of Operations Management, agile methodologies contributed to operational performance which in turn contributed to the marketing and financial performance of the organization.
In additional research, 54% of people reported agile approaches (specifically scrum) resulted in improved satisfaction with deliverables, People must be dedicated to agile teams.
Research across 160,000 projects and 50,000 agile teams found when team members were 95% dedicated to an agile team, their productivity doubled, compared to teams in which members were only 50% dedicated, Teams must be stable to reap the full benefits of agile.
While it is relatively rare for team members to remain the same from quarter-to-quarter, a higher percentage of stability contributes to 60% better productivity, 40% better predictability, and 60% better responsiveness.
In another exploration, 88% of over 2,000 respondents representing 91 countries and 27 industries reported agile—and the scrum methodology specifically—improves the quality of life. Agile is easy to learn, but difficult to master and therefore requires a sustained commitment for implementation, learning, and ongoing improvement.
It is a journey that is never complete, but the reasons for investing are clear in its results. For most companies, the people and business results make it well worth the effort.
Agile is easy to learn, but difficult to master and therefore requires a sustained commitment for implementation, learning, and ongoing improvement.
It is a journey that is never complete, but the reasons for investing are clear in its results.
For most companies, the people and business results make it well worth the effort.