Five Essential Factors for Agile Transformations in Enterprises

Introduction

For enterprises working on projects following the rigid Waterfall methodology for a long time, switching to the Agile methodology can be challenging. They would need to come up with ways to make the transformation from Waterfall to Agile smooth and simple.

In this blog, we discuss five essential success factors to the transition from Waterfall to Agile methodology. These factors will help any organisation adopt Agile and enhance organizational growth.

The Five Factors

• Technology

This refers to any process, tool or material that acts as a problem-solver and is the first aspect that companies rely on. However, most of the times, technology is the only aspect organisations focus on. Some notable examples are software tools like Mingle, Jira, ScrumWorks, or Greenhopper, and frameworks like Scrum and XP. These help teams in solving issues of their working pipeline and creating successful projects. However, the efforts of making a transition get hindered due to the absence of other factors.

• Organisational Design

This aspect focuses on both the organisational and physical structure of a company. An organisation having multiple layers of decision-makers might result in interventions that will greatly slow down the transition efforts within an organisation.

Coming to the physical structure of an organisation, it is difficult for teams to collaborate in organisations where the resources are in remote locations or are preferred to be kept only at specific locations. This will affect a team’s chemistry and result in a ‘Hard Sell’. Having a strong organisational design will improve the chances of an organisation being better in what they do.

• Leadership

Any company needs to hire managers who lead by example. This is because leadership improves the company's prospect and enables the manager to assign money, time, or people to the organisation, resulting in adopting Agile easily. When Agile is being adopted properly, the Agile methodology grows and thrives in the organisation and the company moves progressively in all its departments. If there are a lack of mentors to guide a manager in leading his or her team, then the company may have to look up to leaders at other levels.

Proper transition efforts need proper leadership.

• People

Any organisation is built by employees and the type of progress the organisation makes depends solely on them. For employees to work together as a team with new ideas and efforts, they need to be physically on the same floor. Individual employees will react differently to the proposed changes and may lead to uncomfortable situations or challenges. For this, the organisation will need some energetic and motivated professionals to make the Agile transition. That will be people with energy and enthusiasm but with low egos.

That's the key to making a successful transition happen.

• Culture

This is the most influential success factor. Typically, culture is also the most difficult one to change because any organisation takes years to develop one. A professional can solve this problem by first analysing what the challenges are and then design an appropriate response to the situation. Agile works appropriately with a collaborative and team-based culture where the people are clear in sharing thoughts and ideas and not afraid to make mistakes.

The way forward

An Agile transition should be smooth and productive for which any organisation needs to pay attention to these top 5 factors. Companies need to properly understand and plan to make an Agile change in the way they work, accommodate their resources and employees, maintain their infrastructure, avoid micromanagement, and let people interact with each other. Once these are taken care of, the rest will fall into place, leading to a successful Agile transformation.