Agile, More Agile, Agile Enterprise – the Five Biggest Challenges
July 31, 2024 | 5 min
Agile working has arrived in modern corporate life. Methods such as Scrum, Kanban and Lean have become indispensable. Everyone is talking about the agile enterprise – at least as far as project management strategy is concerned. The sticking point: as an agile newcomer, it can be tricky for some. How can agile methods be transported into the company? What do you need to consider and how do you go about it? This blog article looks at the five biggest challenges on the way to becoming an agile enterprise – and how leading companies have managed to overcome them.
1. Change Is the Journey, Not the Destination!
The first challenge relates to the company’s own expectations. There is no checklist that companies can work through on their way to becoming an agile enterprise. Management consultants McKinsey describe the process in two phases. Phase one: develop visions and try things out. If what you have tried works, the second phase (“Scale and improve”) comes into play. This is where we scale up: things that have worked on a small scale can be transferred to the corporate context.
One example of how this challenge can be met is the agile pilots’ method: small steps on the road to the agile enterprise. A car manufacturer also used this approach to get the ball rolling. Rapid Application Development – RAD – is the magic word. The manufacturer wanted to achieve a faster time-to-market and increase development efficiency. Instead of struggling with lengthy specification processes, a tangible prototype was created without further ado. “Get out of theory and into practice, make things tangible” is the motto.
The agile mindset is applied at RAD: Try, learn, make mistakes. A tangible process says much more than a thousand-page PowerPoint. The important thing is not to be afraid of discarding something, because the learning process proves to be just as valuable as the time invested.
This can no longer be done by hand: there is now software that supports specialist departments with little IT knowledge in helping to generate prototypes. A software platform such as cplace, which can be used for RAD, enables application development using No-Code and Low-Code, even for non-programmers. This allows OEM companies to practice Fast Development.
2. The Thing about Complexity…
The path to an agile enterprise quickly becomes complex: where to start? What is the first step? How to create a common understanding? What is the perfect path to the goal? Does it even exist? A showcase example from practice reveals that it is a mammoth task to “agilize” the entire company. However, a company from the pharmaceutical industry was not discouraged by this. Strongly driven by the business idea of bringing faster and more diverse treatment options to the market, it faced up to its own complexity. Agilization was to influence the entire company, including methods, processes, tools and its own culture.
A good method for understanding this complexity is the so-called “Walking Skeleton“. “Walking” refers to the processes that are gone through end-2-end. This develops a shared understanding of complexity. In the example of the pharmaceutical company, this was the planning process for researching various drugs and developing them through to market maturity. The focus is on the essentials, on the “skeleton”. Instead of getting hung up on the small details, the process is followed stringently.
In the next iteration, “meat is put on the bone”. In other words, the sub-steps of the project are implemented. Processes need to be transformed and adapted and the appropriate software developed. Then the short step back: what is still missing from the skeleton? Which muscles are already intact?
As a meeting session, the “Walking Skeleton” looks something like this:
- The session lasts two hours and is moderated.
- The participants consist of those involved in the project.
- The aim is to achieve a common end-2-end understanding. All participants should understand the process from the user’s perspective and derive requirements (stories) for implementation.
- The focus is on visualization.
- Successive preparatory work is important.
- Feedback is collected at the end of the session. The issues with the highest priority are discussed and processed afterwards.
This approach is time-consuming and requires good preparation. And yet the effort pays off, because the “Walking Skeleton” method ensures understanding at an early stage. Especially where there are interfaces between departments and processes.
3. A-gile as in A-narchy?
Another challenge is the understanding of roles. Who is allowed to do what? Who should do what? – An omnipresent question in scaling organizations. The classic agile mantra is not without reason: “agile means freedom, responsibility and trust for the individual.” But in large organizations in particular, the question of a managed framework for this freedom arises. The answer to this is: the individual path is the goal because every company has different levels of maturity in terms of agile working methods.
Current observations from the market provide inspiration. Agile requires a genuine understanding of roles; it does not mean “everyone can do everything”. Rather, it is about allowing employees to grow beyond themselves and their certifications. Roles can be shaped and developed: what is learned in training courses should be applied in practice. To prevent responsibility from being centralized again retroactively, investments must be made in qualifications.
Scaling frameworks are particularly popular in large companies. Currently, these are individualized approaches that are supported by companies. Frameworks such as SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) and LeSS (Large Scaled Scrum) are a promising alternative.
4. Flow of Information Instead of Frustration
Unfiltered and non-transparent information circulating within the company poses a major challenge for decision-makers. The ideal situation would be to communicate decision-making requirements quickly and transparently at all levels without any frictional losses.
One example of this is an automotive OEM that has tackled this challenge. The “Scaling Agile with Boards of Boards” strategy aims to accelerate the flow of information. The manufacturer used agile boards, which are already established and accepted in the personal and team-internal organization and are considered a useful tool in day-to-day business.
The use of these agile boards in the decision-making hierarchy offers the following advantages:
- Decision-making tasks can be transferred to board boards and escalated by anyone at any board level.
- This means that all information is available digitally – an absolute accelerator for the flow of information.
- Boards offer flexible, filterable views of shared data sets. Data can be transferred live and color-coded in real time.
So, what is already used in the personal, day-to-day organization (in the form of dedicated boards) can be projected onto the entire company, thus solving a real pain point. But beware: an organization must be able and willing to deal with this level of transparency.
5. Connecting the Dots
Agile companies rely on many application systems and processes that need to be coordinated efficiently. The seamless networking of these systems is crucial. Where committees used to meet, PowerPoint presentations and signature folders were prepared, the agile enterprise requires a view into the beating heart of the company – in real time.
A leading car manufacturer has solved this challenge with an innovative cockpit that drives the integration and consolidation of decision-relevant data. This cockpit, supported by a Management board mandate, steers the operational fortunes of the company. As an integral part of top management under the leadership of the COO (Chief Operating Officer), it quickly identifies problems that arise and offers a holistic solution comprising mindset, organization, method, and technology.
The data hubs are now at the center, which means that there are no longer any direct connections between systems. Interface directories are becoming increasingly important and enable dynamic connectivity as required. Flexibility is the key to presenting data in a form that is relevant for decision-making.
Agile Enterprise: A Conclusion
Implementing agile methods and practices in companies brings both opportunities and challenges. The five challenges we have identified in this blog post on the path to becoming an agile company require a clear vision, flexibility, and a deeper understanding of the organization’s needs.
Nevertheless, agile organizations offer the opportunity to react faster to change, improve collaboration and drive innovation. By overcoming these hurdles, companies can take full advantage of agile ways of working and ensure sustainable competitiveness.
About the Author
Julia Gerstner, Content Marketing, cplace
With its Next-Generation Project and Portfolio Management technology, cplace is revolutionizing and transforming the way people and organizations collaborate on complex projects. The flexible software platform enables leading companies to create customized solutions for digital transformation and developing complex products.
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