Is your organization trying to adopt an agile methodology, yet you don’t know a clear process and steps to follow? Then consider reading this guide to the end as we unleash all you need to know to accomplish the agile methodology successfully.

Before your organization adopts an agile methodology, you should know that the agile methodology differs from organization to organization based on the teams you have. This implies that for a successful agile process, you must take the right measures to avoid possible failures.

Otherwise, a slight mistake during the agile journey could lead to delays in product development, disagreements among the teams, missed deadlines, loss of top talents, and staff feeling exhausted.

The purpose of adopting an agile methodology is to improve the way an organization operates, diverting the processes from the traditional way of working to an agile way of working, a move that helps improve productivity at a minimum cost. That is why we highlight the basic steps you should consider while working your way towards agile methodology.

What is agile methodology?

The agile methodology involves separating a project into different phases, with the teams collaborating and defining improvement measures to take on every phase. The process, therefore, entails continuous planning, appropriate execution, and ongoing evaluation of the project. The goal is to achieve the best results using minimum resources within a given time frame.

Once your organization achieves agile transformation, you will enjoy benefits such as faster development times, reduced defect rates, and improved customer satisfaction.

As an organization, adopting the agile way faster can be quite hard, especially when your team is used to traditional methods. This, therefore, calls for changing the whole organization structure, changing the mindset of the team members, and adopting new technologies. However, while the process might take a toll on you, you can be sure to enjoy the many benefits in the long run.

So, are you planning to drive your organization towards agile? Take the steps below for accuracy.

The agile transformation journey

Take the steps below, and you will be sure to achieve agile transformation without any setbacks.

Start to think agile and understand what agile is

Before you figure out any other aspect of agile, start by analyzing the already existing structure of the organization, mainly communication, and collaboration which are agile key elements.

Get a team leader who will start persuading the teams to start embracing the incoming change (trying to adopt an agile mindset). The teams need to start organizing themselves and collaborating as they aim at a common goal.

Some of the tips that will enable the teams to adopt an agile mindset include the following:

Setting small and achievable goals for teams, the evaluate the performance of the teams. This tip will help you note any possible mistake so that you can correct and strategize better in the future.

Arranging meetings more often to re-evaluate the agile processes

Creating a team of leaders to ensure other teams follow the new directives without thinking of the traditional ways. It is the leader who should guide, coach, and explain the processes to the teams.

Agile Coaching

The second phase towards a successful agile transformation journey is all about raising awareness of agile frameworks and practices. Some of the agile frameworks include crystal and scrum.

Agile practices, on the other hand, include lead time, sprints, MVP- minimum viable product, user stories, epics, scrum artifacts, and retrospectives.

It is the role of an agile coach to ensure every member of the team understands and implements the practices. Besides, the agile coach introduces the DevOps culture in the agile transformation process for effectiveness.

Note: You can hire an expert company agile software development company to speed up the product delivery process when you want a digital product by skipping the coaching stage.

Introduction of Agile Tooling Stack

As the teams continue to adopt the new operational norms, there will be a need to embrace the changes.

Since communication and collaboration are the basics of agile transformation, you can consider the following tools to ease the process.

• Skype, Slack, and Microsoft teams for short-term communication
• Loom, Zoom, and Google Meet for video communication
• Dropbox & Google Drive to share large-size files
• Tuple, GitHub, and Jira for developer tools
• Marvel, Figma, and InVision as designer collaboration tools
• Trello and ClickUp and work management tools
• Notion and Airtable as data management tools
• Basecamp, Miro and Mural, and Freehand by InVision for virtual collaboration

Creating a roadmap to agile transformation

For a successful agile transformation, there should be a clear roadmap that will help you set the goals and objectives to ensure the teams achieve them under specific milestones. While creating an agile transformation roadmap, use the elements below:

• Think of the vision and establish an end goal
• Evaluate the possible agile transformation timeframe
• The setup transition process
• Highlight the objectives and the results you want to achieve

Create a product mindset other than a project mindset

The best way to adopt agile transformation once you have all the elements in place is to now embrace a product mindset and not a project mindset.

Unlike the traditional methods where the teams focus mainly on project mindset, i.e., focusing on the next project once the delivery is complete agile method advocates for the process of product management. Therefore, agile is all about a product mindset, i.e., continuous integration and continuous delivery, where the agile team focuses on maintaining and delivering value throughout the software lifespan.

Test and Learn

Finally, testing as you continue to learn is the next phase of agile transformation. At this point, all the teams understand their roles and the processes to follow as a way of embracing agile ways. With all the agile tools, agile best practices in place, and a clear agile roadmap, you only need to test and evaluate all the processes. While testing, you should note possible areas that don’t function appropriately as you fix them for better performance in the future.

Things to do during the testing phase include:

• Doing test sprints to evaluate the requirements to accomplish
• Setting up daily meetings to evaluate what was done the previous day, what to be done on the day, and any possible pitfalls that were discovered.
• Retrospectives which involve re-evaluating past projects that failed as a learning tool

Confirm the agility of the organization

Many organizations fail to weigh the agility of the organization’s status to determine if they have transformed to agile completely.

As you try to put your setup to agile, you need to re-evaluate the process to determine if you are moving in the required direction or not.

If you note any of the following, then you haven’t successfully transformed to agile, and you should revisit the processes.

• When some phases still use traditional methods during product development
• When there is no communication with end users during product development
• No clear requirements at every phase of product development
• When the organization doesn’t receive any feedback, and no loopholes are identified during the development process.

Should you experience any of the above, start from the very first phase of agile transformation and embrace even the small changes as you move to the next phases. Still, if you experience such issues yet you carried out the agile transformation process well, you might need to consider an agile transformation consultancy for expert advice.

Conclusion

Many establishments have diverted to agile transformation and are already having an easy time with product management. Your organization, too, can adopt the agile methodology in an easy manner. You simply need to follow the steps highlighted without missing a single phase.

To know more get in touch with our experts at Aalpha information systems.

Also read: Why agile transformations fail | 4 Values and 12 Principles of the Agile Manifesto|