Top Tips for Adopting Agile Techniques

Agile is a word associated with progress and momentum. It’s short-hand for describing how organizations want to operate. It is now so widespread that the ability to apply agile techniques and having an agile mindset are appearing in more and more job descriptions and interview questions. However, experiences differ:

• There are many different definitions and interpretations of agile and agility.
• Many of us are working in agile environments but often this means using some techniques, but not the adoption of a true agile mindset.
• We suspect an agile approach will fit better with all the uncertainty around us but are not sure how to get started.

In this feature I highlight 10 top techniques we can embrace to adopt higher levels of agile practices and techniques into our everyday work. All these ideas are practical and have been used by me multiple times. They are straightforward in concept but demanding emotionally as they require a shift in behavior and habits.

Whether you know lots about Agile methodologies or are still confused about the term, these practical ideas are suitable for all. 

Each of the following tips and techniques will give you a practical way to develop and enhance these behaviors. Each contributes to multiple behaviors as they ensure that you are applying the agile concepts to your work, hence you are behaving in an agile way – a truly virtuous circle.

Delivering an evolving solution – with frequent outcomes throughout the life of the initiative – means we are delivering mini waves of change. Each of these changes are not easy to predict because they are new; we have never created them before. This means we need to adopt a “scientific mindset” and run small experiments to see what works.

From start to finish of any agile initiative, we need to ask if the experiment has worked. If yes, then we can build upon it. If no, we run another experiment until we find what works. As with any experiment, we need to identify the success and failure criteria before we start. To do this, create a list of good and bad words to kickstart your thoughts:

• Good: removed repetition and duplication; saved time; simple; intuitive.
• Bad: added repetition and duplication; took longer; complex; confusing.

A quick way to find these criteria, is to imagine good and bad scenarios and how we would react to each of them:

• Good: “This is working well because…[what are your praising/celebrating?]”
• Bad: “This is useless because…[what are you annoyed about, what is irritating you?]”.

Being agile requires us to develop a new focus. We need to focus on our accomplishments, not our tasks. To do this, start each day with an idea of what you will have finished and imagine how that creates satisfaction for you, your colleagues and customers.

To help imagine your achievements, use this checklist:

• What decisions were taken today?
• What agreements were made?
  • What have your stakeholders agreed to participate in doing?
  • What work has been accepted by your stakeholders?
• What did you create that didn’t exist yesterday?
• What did you get finished today?

Use a quick mental checklist to rapidly identify where your time will be most usefully spent. Use a checklist to cut through your emotion to focus on business value. Ask a variety of questions:

• What work has the most imminent deadline?
• Who will be most annoyed/inconvenienced if I don’t do this?
• What work is an input to other work?
• What work will solve my biggest worry/problem/challenge?

This should help you find the most valuable work, but to double check, make sure that you have selected your priorities using these two factors:

• What work requires an input not yet available?
• What work is easier, so I want to do it?

One significant challenge of being agile is that delivering an evolving solution is not a linear journey. Too often everything is connected to everything else; a typical network. We rely on inputs from other initiatives and are required to deliver our outcomes to enable other initiatives to complete their work.

Break work into smaller, stand-alone pieces so that you can flex what you deliver, breaking the stalemate of not having the inputs you need or running late for other initiatives.

To create an evolving solution, you need to be creative and have new ideas you can pivot to. A quick way to gain a new perspective is to ask yourself how what you are working on would be used by different people or in different situations:

• How would existing and potential new customers use this differently?
• How would offices in different locations use this differently?
• How would customers or staff with high, medium and low digital skills use this?
• How would customers who want high, medium or low levels of self-service use this?

Agile requires us to stay motivated during multiple iterations of change. We need to remind ourselves of what we have achieved, not what we still have left to do. To help us achieve this, break the work into small pieces so that we build up a track record of achievements, which reinforces our motivation.

• Keep work small: less time, less dependencies, less effort.
• Use visual tools to emphasize achievements.

For every piece of work, apply the rule of 3: DRAFT > UPDATED > FINAL

• You need time to create your first draft, involving thinking, researching, designing and developing this first piece of work.
• You need time for this to be reviewed by others and for them to give you feedback so you can create an updated version.
• You need time to review any feedback on your updated version before issuing a final version.

This all takes much longer than your first estimate, which tends to assume you create once and its done!

State what you have created, not what you ran out of time to do. Ask specific questions to generate feedback that you can use to enhance the next version:

• What is useful that I should develop more of?
• What is acceptable but could be improved with amendments?
• What are those amendments?
• What else do you want to add?
• What do you want to remove because it is not relevant?

With so many small achievements that form the evolving solution, it is possible to get caught up in all the things you are creating. It is important to regularly check that you are still on course to deliver the end goal – the bigger picture – and not just a series of small wins.

To do this, take the macro view – think about the destination, the bigger picture of capability that you are part of creating. Describe how your work contributes to this; if you cannot tell this story, are you going off at tangents?

Agile demands the behaviors of flexibility and innovation, and these require new sources of information and new perspectives. To inspire yourself and feed your creativity, increase the breadth and depth of your network so you have more choice about who to collaborate with:

• Find subject matter experts to increase depth.
• Identify complementary skills and knowledge and connect with thought leaders in those areas.
• Build your credibility so people want to collaborate with you:
  • Share updates of what you are doing so people can appreciate what you are experienced in.
  • Share experiences and lessons learned of past work and situations so people know you have a track record in those areas.

Invest in your agile capability by using the techniques in this feature.

For most of us, the scale of change in our organizations is only going to increase in volume and pace. Embracing, adopting and enhancing these agile behaviors, attitudes and habits will help us to cope.

For more detail on these top tips, check out our 'Being Agile' webinar recording.