Introducing Agile Beyond Tech

Introducing Agile Beyond Tech.

When working towards a goal, a relationship forms with the work to be done.

When working solo, that relationship or system is in one person's head.

Working as a pair, it's hopefully a symbiotic balance between the two partners.

When 3, 4 or more people are involved the complexity grows; the number of possible combinations about how they can approach the work increases exponentially.

Increase size just a little further to a team of 6 or 8 and it will be noticeable how different task allocations, roles, skills and personalities come into play. Processes and rules of engagement start to emerge.

Scale that up to an organisation with several teams or departments and we'll see corporate norms, behaviours creating a culture and unwritten rules and structures that often predate most peoples' tenure yet are still followed.

These structures are needed, and they're not bad - but they do add an overhead. We start to get in each other's way, it's just the nature of a human system. And like any machine, our human systems need maintenance to keep them running in good condition.

If you recognise any of these internally created challenges, then you're not alone.

• Competing and changing priorities
• Unfinished and unexpected work
• 'Scope creep'
• Ambiguity around objectives
• Misunderstanding of detail
• Poor visibility of progress
• Slow decision making
• Internal blockages and impediments hindering progress
• Bottlenecks, handoffs and queued work causing delay
• Overload or apparent under utilisation
• High volatility in individuals' workload
• Low engagement and morale
• Collaboration effectiveness
• Poor teamwork
• Communication breakdowns
• Low responsiveness and flexibility to change
• Slow time to market
• Estimation and forecasting difficulty
• Low predictability of work
• Missed or 'artificial' deadlines
• Customer dissatisfaction
• Product market fit
• Quality issues or re-work
• Arcane processes

Business Agility practices can help reduce the friction caused by these very normal problems, particularly in 'knowledge work'. This could in be a marketing team, a software component, a new product, an internal process change - any situation people are working on an objective which is unique and the path to reach it somewhat uncertain.

As an Agile Coach I help clients with the 'how'; the controllable behaviours and processes that we have agency over.

As a coach I'll help create awareness, as a consultant I will partner to co-create solutions and as a guide, will train and mentor people to improve their ways of working. There are hundreds of practices, techniques and micro adjustments from the broad school of business agility that can be applied - all underpinned by the principles of fast feedback and course-correction, empathic resonant leadership at all levels and openness, transparency and collaboration in the way the work is approached.

If you have any of these challenges and would like to explore solutions, get in touch.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mc...

Early discovery work is not chargeable and there'll be some insights you can take away for free.

('Very Agile Dog' Image credit; Murilo Viviani , via Unsplash)