On Becoming Agile

Daniel J. Power, Ciara Heavin

• Publisher: Business Expert Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781637420096
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Information Management
• Index: Business

The goal of this book is to explain and facilitate the journey to Agile.

Becoming agile is an ongoing journey. As the global environment changes, and becomes more complex and more uncertain, the importance of increasing agility and developing an agile mindset grows. The goal of this book is to explain and facilitate the journey. We explore agile values, practices, and principles that can help people cope with volatile and ambiguous situations. Agile values improve processes and promote communication in an organization. Agile practices advance innovation through high-performance multidisciplinary teams.

Agile is about learning to anticipate and respond appropriately to the unexpected. Being agile is about interactions with people that result in successfully completing work tasks and meeting objectives. Agile is not about blindly moving faster, rather it is about continuous flexibility and learning. This book is targeted to advanced students and managers who are interested in learning to be agile. This accessible practical text poses 30 questions and provides answers that provide a starting point for further reflection.

CHAPTER 1

Agile Mindset and Principles

Agile is a way of thinking and a collaborative approach used by individuals, self-organizing and cross-functional teams, and organizations. Agile assists people in evolving solutions through the division of tasks into short phases of work and frequent reassessment and adaptation of plans. Agile thinking is based upon a set of values, frameworks, principles, and tools for managing and delivering results. An agile mindset involves developing appropriate attitudes, principles, and thinking processes that support an agile work environment. Overall, being agile emphasizes adjustments, incremental delivery, collaboration, and continual learning.

This chapter explores five foundation questions, including: What are agile principles and values? What are agile ethical principles? What is agile project management (APM)? What are key agile concepts? Why is agile important? The answers to these questions establish a starting point for becoming agile.

Q1. What Are Agile Principles and Values?

Practitioners and researchers have been discussing agile processes for more than 25 years. A major conceptual advance, The Manifesto for Agile Software Development, was published in 2001 by 17 leaders in the field of software development. They identified four principles based upon their experiences. The manifesto states “we have come to value:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

• Working software over comprehensive documentation

• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

• Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more, cf., agilemanifesto.org.”

An agile principle is a fundamental proposition that supports agile behavior and reasoning. The Agile Alliance (agilealliance.org) identifies 12 principles and guiding practices that support teams in implementing and executing with agility. The principles are based on the Agile Manifesto. Agile practitioners should try to understand and then internalize the following principles:

• Satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable outputs.

• Changing requirements, even late in the project, are welcomed. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.

• Delivering results regularly and frequently is important.

• Stakeholders must work together daily throughout the project.

• Managers should create project teams around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need and trust them to get the job done.

• The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a project team is in face-to-face conversation.

• Tangible results are the primary measure of progress.

• Agile processes promote a sustainable work pace indefinitely.

• Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.

• Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done—is essential.

• Outcomes emerge from self-organizing teams.

• At regular intervals, a team should reflect on how to become more effective, then adjust accordingly.

Project-Management.com identifies 10 key principles of agile software development. The project management key principles are: (1) active user involvement is imperative; (2) the team must be empowered to make decisions; (3) requirements evolve but the timescale is fixed; (4) capture requirements at a high level; (5) develop small, incremental releases and iterate; (6) focus on frequent delivery of products; (7) complete each feature before moving on to the next; (8) apply the 80/20 rule; (9) testing is integrated throughout the project lifecycle—test early and often; and (10) a collaborative and cooperative approach between all stakeholders is essential. There is some overlap of this list with the 12 Agile Alliance principles.

In brief, our summarized list of key agile attitudes and principles includes: (1) collaboration, (2) continuous improvement, (3) delivering value, (4) fact-based decision making, (5) pride in ownership, (6) respect for others and for self, and (7) a willingness to adapt and change.

There are multiple lists of agile principles, we see a commonality here. One should not memorize these principles, rather one should try to understand them, so that they guide thinking and behavior.

Q2. What Are Agile Ethical Principles?

Ethics is guided by ideas about virtue, duty, and consequences. Ethics is about who you want to be and how you want to act both as an individual and as part of a team. Ethical principles should guide how we behave and the decisions we make.

Agile is founded upon two statements of principles that provide ethical guidelines to agile professionals. In one of the agile processes, Scrum, five ethical values are emphasized: (1) keep commitments, (2) courage, (3) focus, (4) openness, and (5) respect. These values must be understood and lived. Examining these values helps internalize them; let us see what each means:

• Keep commitments—Before you make a commitment to team members, clients, and stakeholders, think carefully. A commitment obliges you to do something. If you make a promise, you have a duty to keep the promise, or explain why you cannot.

• Courage—Have the strength to take chances, to persevere in the face of obstacles, and withstand criticism and difficulties.

• Focus—Stay focused on the activity that you are trying to complete. Do not get sidetracked.

• Openness—You have a duty to be honest, do not keep secrets, and be willing to try new things.

• Respect—Consider the feelings, wishes, rights, or traditions of others. Listen. Encourage. Congratulate. Be helpful. Say thank you.

Five general ethical principles should also guide managers, professionals, and staff in agile decision making, agile processes, and agile behavior. These principles are:

• Beneficence and non-maleficence—Involves balancing the benefits of an action against the risks and costs involved and non-maleficence means avoiding causing harm. Do no harm or evil.

• Loyalty and responsibility—Always act in the best interests of the client, organization, colleagues, and society.

• Integrity—Be honest, principled, honorable, and upright; be willing to fight for one’s beliefs.

• Justice and fairness—Apply a standard of rightness and fairness to judge and decide without reference to one’s feelings or personal interests.

• Respect people’s rights and maintain their dignity—Individuals have the right to self-determination.

These principles and values are often translated into codes of ethics and professional conduct. For example, the Project Management Institute (PMI) Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct describes the expectations practitioners have for themselves and others. The code specifies the basic obligation of honesty and fairness. It requires that practitioners demonstrate a commitment to honesty, ethical conduct, and compliance with laws and regulations. It carries the obligation to comply with organizational and professional policies and laws. The values that the global project management community define as most important are fairness, honesty, respect, and responsibility.

Ethical agile practices can reduce and even mitigate unintended consequences. The benefits of agile do not result solely from the adoption of a set of practices; rather, if agile and agility are to deliver value, then a positive system of principles and duties must also be adopted and followed, cf., Sliger (2009). To become agile, we must strive to engage in business conduct that is ethical and responsible. Also, we must act deliberately, and do what is right. In general, we must act consistently and ethically.

Q3. What Is Agile Project Management?

Applying agile values and principles when managing a project is commonly identified as Agile Project Management (APM). APM is an iterative, value-driven approach to delivering a project. Sanchez, Bonjour, Micaëlli, and Monticolo (2019) refer to this development as the agilification of project management.

APM is a process that involves breaking down a project into smaller, more manageable chunks to better deliver a successful project and create value. APM emphasizes methods and processes that prioritize action and feedback over planning and control (Schmitz 2018). Managing a project based upon agile principles involves continual collaboration with stakeholders and continuous improvement and iteration at every stage.

The role of a manager is to deploy, direct, and coordinate human resources, financial resources, technological resources, and other resources efficiently and effectively. Managing a project involves applying knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to guide project activities that are intended to meet project requirements. The primary challenge of a project manager is to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. Managing most projects involves finding a balance between the three constraints of scope, cost, and time to achieve a high-quality outcome. Scope refers to what is accomplished.

APM has increased in popularity as managers try to overcome the many complex issues associated with more traditional project management approaches. In comparison to bureaucratic approaches, APM seems simple and intuitive.

According to the Project Management Institute (PMI), more than 70 percent of organizations have incorporated an agile approach, and agile projects are 28 percent more successful than traditional projects, cf., Conrad (2019). PMI (2017) reports “an actively engaged executive sponsor is the top driver of projects meeting their original goals and business intent.” In the QuickStart Business Productivity Blog, Ali (2018) identifies five companies that successfully implemented agile Scrum project management, including 3M, IBM, ANZ, Google, and Spotify. IBM identified improvements in metrics such as on-time delivery, defect backlog, customer satisfaction, maintenance, and innovation, cf., Brown (2013).

APM emphasizes work organized in small chunks delivered incrementally by a collaborative, self-organizing team. Multiple teams may work on the same larger scope project. For some bureaucratic organizations and certain types of high-risk innovation projects, a pure APM approach may not be viable. A more pragmatic solution may require a balance between the stability offered by a traditional planning approach and the flexibility associated with an agile approach. Adoption of a hybrid project m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Description
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Agile Mindset and Principles
• Chapter 2 Becoming an Agile Practitioner
• Chapter 3 Agile Approaches and Value-Driven Project Delivery
• Chapter 4 Collaborative Leadership, Stakeholder Engagement, and Performance
• Chapter 5 Understanding Agile Planning
• Chapter 6 Finding Success: Detecting Roadblocks and Resolving Issues
• Summary Becoming Agile
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• About the Authors
• Index
• Backcover