10 Ways to Create a Culture of Agile Innovation

1. Learn From Failure, Transform While You Perform

Fail fast, cheaply and learn as you go: Set objectives at the outset, and ensure the organization and stakeholders get smarter every step of the way Agile “theory” doesn’t help: Any agile implementation needs to fit your needs, rather than prescribe processes or practices that don’t make sense to your business. All about the people: acquiring, training and retaining the talent that you need Transform while you perform: Business doesn’t stop. Today’s environment demands that we digitally transform today while we continue to perform.

2. Encourage Design Thinking

Design and development should not be siloed. Development needs to be in on the design decisions to make sure the solutions can be built, and design needs to be in on the development so that the solution is built as designed… it’s not about “design by committee” but about allowing trained designers to guide the solution rather than dictate it.

3. Empower Your Employees

The only way agile development has a chance to succeed is if the culture empowers employees. And this needs to extend throughout the organization, including executives and those on the business-side of the organization.”

4. Organisational Process Change Required

Having the processes, communication flows and tools which characterize a digital workplace will be crucial in bringing agile to the whole organization. Effective governance structures and management can only be achieved if information flows are digital.

5. Inspire Innovation Away from Day-to-Day

Getting your workers together for fun and learning activities can create better bonds and promote team building. Build projects that are designed to give employees a perspective on how other jobs and roles work within the organization.

6. Agile Training from the Top Down

Make sure every department head is thoroughly trained on agile so they can implement these practices from the top down and ensure the processes are continuing to be implemented. It’s also important to train someone on agile as soon as they start so they don’t go back to old processes.

7. Plan for Agile and Adopt Agile Practices at a Team Level

Individual teams need to make specific changes to how they operate; for example, adopting scrum or kanban. Businesses have a variety of different agile methodologies to choose from, and many adapt their chosen methodology for their specific needs.

8. Implement Continuous Integration & DevOps

DevOps involves development and production working closely together to ensure faster and more predictable software releases. Continuous integration, meanwhile, involves team members integrating their work at least daily, and receiving immediate, automated feedback in order to improve quality.

9. Deliver on Your Sprints

Hautau’s team works in “sprints” where it assigns a number of tasks that each team member has to complete within that sprint time limit (in their case it’s two weeks)… The deliverables from the sprint should be lean but meet all requirements to make that task valuable to the team.

10. Cash Management is Paramount

Nothing hamstrings an entrepreneur and his/her organization more than lacking the cash necessary to implement the vision and accomplish the mission so always focus on making cash king. Wasting cash on anything that doesn’t drive the organization forward will hamper agility.

Credit

CMS Wire

SAY HI Anne Larsen