Agile vs. Waterfall: The Pros and Cons of Each Methodology
Do you know the difference between agile vs. waterfall, and have you considered which is best for your business?
Don’t go chasing waterfalls — unless you’re seeking a project management methodology. 😁 The waterfall method is a common framework teams have utilized for years. But it isn’t the only way of doing things, and it may not be the best way, depending on the needs of your team.
In this post, we’ll cover the differences between agile and waterfall methodologies, including the pros and cons of each. We’ll also share a potential alternative called the hybrid method, which can provide the best of both worlds for certain teams.
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Agile vs. waterfall
When it comes to agile vs. waterfall, these methodologies don’t share a lot in common. In many ways, agile is the answer to the limitations of the commonly used waterfall method. However, there are definitely still pros and cons to each framework.
Let’s dig into both of these methodologies in more detail.
The waterfall methodology
We’ll start off with the waterfall approach since it’s a little easier to explain. While the idea of a waterfall may sound majestic and bold, the waterfall method is fairly traditional and straightforward.
The waterfall model is used to describe traditional project management, where a project plan is laid out by a project manager before work begins. Project requirements and tasks are planned in advance and given to the team, who then work on one task and then the next until project delivery.
Tasks are completed in the order they were laid out in the original plan. The sequential order of tasks cascading from one to the next is what gives waterfall project management its name.
Waterfall is a widely used project management methodology, but it does have its limitations. The strict approach helps teams know what to expect through every step of a project, but it isn’t very adaptable, and it can lack input from the team as a whole.
This lack of flexibility has hindered modern teams. It makes it more difficult to switch gears if and when you need to. A predetermined plan doesn't leave much room for change, and it misses out on adapting to invaluable feedback from both stakeholders and customers.
Waterfall Pros
- Clear goals and objectives are provided at the outset.
- There’s a straightforward structure that’s repeated project after project.
- It’s easy for team members to understand what’s expected of them.
- There’s less general pressure on employees.
- It’s easier to learn the ropes, especially for new employees.
- Information is easily passed on to all team members.
- Success is measured by the completion of tasks, which provides faster gratification.
- Budgets can be more accurately predicted.
- The end result of a project is decided from the beginning, so the journey is clear for everyone involved.
- Most planning is led by one person.
Waterfall Cons
- The process is not as flexible as agile approaches.
- It’s difficult to foresee roadblocks and dependencies that could delay work.
- Work is not always evenly spread out across the team.
- Project overload is possible.
- Short-lived teams may ignore conflict for the sake of getting to the end of the project.
- It’s difficult to change directions or the scope of deliverables once a project begins.
- There’s less customer involvement throughout project or product development.
- Stakeholders may not see progress until the end of a project or until a final product is complete.
- There isn't an early testing phase to ensure a project or product is on the right track.
The agile methodology
Agile is an iterative approach that puts emphasis on testing and adapting. It uses early feedback and stakeholder involvement to determine the best possible path forward. There’s still a plan with agile, but it isn't rigid or strict, and it leaves plenty of room to adapt and grow along the way.
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The plan evolves as new information is acquired to ensure the end result meets customer and stakeholder needs. Adaptability plays a big role in agile practices, and that’s what has drawn so many teams to the methodology. The ability to adapt in the face of change is a sought-after strength today, given the pace at which change is occurring across technology, the economy, global markets, and more.
Agile Pros
- The entire team is involved in the planning.
- Feedback is central to the process.
- Customers and stakeholders are involved.
- The customer journey is top of mind when a decision is made.
- The team can adapt as new information is acquired.
- Changes can be made along the way to avoid roadblocks or stalled work.
- Each team member's capacity (workload) is continually assessed to prevent burnout.
- Long-standing teams continue to learn how to work together.
- Processes are continually improved upon throughout every phase of the project/product.
- All voices on a team, no matter the role, are heard when it comes time to gather retrospective feedback.
Agile Cons
- Agile techniques and terminology can be tough to grasp.
- It can take teams a while to learn proper agile methods.
- Agile teams may not get the support they require from management and business owners.
- Not all team members may buy into the agile framework, presenting a disconnect across the team.
- A lack of documentation can make the details unclear.
- Budgets can become unpredictable if it turns out the project/product needs to go in another direction.
- The scope of a project/product can continue to grow (scope creep).
- The many agile meetings take up a lot of time.
- It’s harder to find new employees who are experienced with agile methods.
Agile is a broad term that covers a number of different frameworks that utilize agile practices. Lean, DevOps, Kanban, and Scrum are all various forms of agile that fulfill different needs.
For example, the Scrum framework involves repeating sprints that are commonly used by agile software development teams. If you haven’t heard of Scrum before, this might be a lot to take in. 🤯
A Scrum takes two weeks, beginning with sprint planning, when the product owner makes prioritization decisions about which backlog items (tasks) should be accomplished in the upcoming sprint. From there, the team works on the specified tasks, guided by a Scrum Master who leads daily standup meetings to keep everyone informed of project/product progress. Lastly, a sprint review and sprint retrospective occur at the end of the sprint to ensure the team continually evolves and improves.
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Interested in learning about other popular agile methodologies? There are so many to choose from! We covered 8 popular development methodologies in a previous post.
The hybrid methodology
Does the choice need to be agile vs. waterfall? You might be thinking, can’t we put all of these benefits together? The hybrid agile approach can offer the best of both words for some teams.
A hybrid model blends the valuable techniques provided by both waterfall and agile frameworks. For example, you might begin with a set of agile sprints for prototyping and gathering feedback, followed by a single plan of action associated with non-agile techniques. It can be the best of both worlds, and it can serve as a stepping stone while a team attempts to make a complete agile transformation.
A hybrid approach often comes into play with agile project management and other non-traditional agile uses. Agile was originally designed for software development, but teams in all sorts of industries continually adopt aspects of agile. The agile methods observed by software developers don’t always work for other types of teams. Agile can be a difficult transition to make, especially when teams are used to things being done another way.
An approach that meets your needs
When choosing which approach is best for your team, business, or enterprise, take time to consider the needs of the team as well as your customers and stakeholders. Agile may be a tough transition to make, but if you believe the benefits will enhance your processes and help your business long-term, it might be time to make the switch. A hybrid approach can help you get there gradually without as many disruptions to your current processes.
Easy Agile is passionate about helping teams work better using agile tools designed for Jira. If you want to learn more about agile and other methodologies, follow the Easy Agile blog. It’s filled with how-to guides, tips, and strategies — and if reading content isn’t for you, we have a podcast too! 📢
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WorkflowAgile 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Agile Methodology
We’re here to talk about agile, and we don’t mean your abilities on a sports field or in a yoga studio. If you’re new to agile as a methodology, there’s a lot to learn, but the basics are simple. Agile 101 begins with understanding that agile can be applied to anything. You can use agile practices to improve your personal task management, optimize workplace efficiency, or align software teams around product development.
No matter the application, the concepts remain the same: Agile creates a continuous improvement mindset that values flexibility, adaptability, collaboration, and efficiency.
In this post, we’ll cover agile 101 basics, the benefits of agile, popular agile methodologies, and common mistakes to avoid.
Agile 101: How it compares to traditional project management
The concept of Agile has evolved, but it really took off and became popularized in software development. In recent years, the methods and guiding principles of Agile have expanded into a variety of industries that want to emphasize continuous improvement and growth.
How does agile compare to traditional project management? In short: It doesn’t. Agile is just the opposite. One of our favorite ways to compare the agile approach to classical project management is to think of them as jazz vs. classical music.
In classical music, a conductor brings a previously composed and organized piece of music to an orchestra. Then, they dictate what happens and when. This is very much the same as traditional project management, where the project manager brings a plan they have conceived on their own to their team and then proceeds to tell the team how to carry it out. The project manager lays out the steps and expects the team to follow them to the letter (or note). 🎼
Jazz, on the other hand, is collaborative. Each band member feeds off of the other, creating music in a flexible and iterative process — just like the agile process. The band, like an agile team, experiments together and freely creates music in the moment. Each iteration is a little bit different, and hopefully better, than the one that preceded it. 🎷
Project management doesn’t allow for this kind of flexibility. It relies on following a strict sequential order. Each project element must be completed before moving on to the next. Just like a waterfall, the flow of work remains the same from project to project.
Agile is non-linear. It focuses on flexibility, collaboration between team members, and delivering consistent value to stakeholders. With each iteration comes new, actionable insights into what’s working, what isn’t, and what needs to change. It’s a multidimensional way of working that removes the bottlenecks inherent in traditional project management.
Agile 101: The benefits of agile
There are many benefits to agile practices for software development projects, as well as many other industries. The general concepts of agile can be applied to all sorts of situations, and its versatility means it will evolve with the needs of your team.
Think of it as a methodology you can apply to any of your business processes for increased collaboration, optimized efficiency, and continuous improvement.
Agile helps teams and businesses:
- Work at optimal efficiency by eliminating waste
- Make more effective decisions
- Adjust as new information comes in or is discovered
- Continually meet stakeholder deliverable deadlines
- Focus on adding value for stakeholders and customers
- Understand the customer journey
- Build superior products
- Understand capacity to ensure no one over or under commits to work
- Identify roadblocks before they occur
- Spot bottlenecks that could delay work
- Collaborate and work better together
- Adapt with technological, economic, and cultural changes
- Prepare for the unexpected
- Establish processes tailored to your needs
- Improve morale and happiness
- Develop a continuous improvement mindset
Agile 101: Popular methodologies
Now that you have a better understanding of agile 101 basics and the benefits of agile, let’s discuss some of the most popular agile methodologies.
Scrum
Scrum is extremely popular in agile software development. It’s a fairly complicated process for those who are unfamiliar with it, but the basics revolve around recurring sprints that each focus on completing a set amount of work.
A Scrum is one sprint lasting 2-4 weeks. At the beginning of the sprint, the product owner decides which task will move from the main list (product backlog) to the sprint to-do list (sprint backlog). The development team, led by a Scrum Master who understands the Scrum process, works to complete the sprint backlog in the allocated time.
The Scrum team meets for daily Scrums or stand-ups that ensure everyone is on the page about possible roadblocks and what work is to be completed next. This process repeats until a product is complete or stakeholders are fully satisfied. At the end of the sprint, a retrospective is held to help the team understand what went well and what they can improve upon.
Kanban
Kanban is a fairly simple agile process that is often partially utilized within other agile methods, such as Scrum. It’s a task management tool designed to optimize efficiency by visualizing all of the required work and limiting works in progress. A Kanban workflow visually organizes tasks on Kanban boards so that work items can move forward smoothly, even as changes and adjustments are made along the way.
In its simplest form, a Kanban board is three columns (To-Do, Doing, and Done) that allow work to freely flow from one phase to the next. Trello is an example of an online Kanban board.
Kanban boards should be placed in an area of the office that’s visible to the entire team. For virtual teams, this may look like an online resource that everyone can access. This helps everyone from the top down get on the same page about action items. If anyone is wondering what’s the most important task of the day, they simply need to check the Kanban board.
Lean
Lean, along with the five lean principles, originally created by Toyota, is a guiding mindset that helps teams work more productively, efficiently, and effectively. It can be applied to various agile and software development methodologies.
Lean software development is all about improving efficiency by eliminating waste, such as reducing tasks and activities that don’t add value. It provides a clear way to scale agile practices across large or growing organizations.
Extreme programming
Extreme programming (XP) is an agile approach centered around improving software quality and responsiveness while evolving with customer requirements. The ultimate goal of extreme programming is producing high-quality results throughout every aspect of the work, not just the final product.
XP decision-making is based on five values: communication, simplicity, feedback, courage, and respect. XP’s specifics won’t apply to all situations, but the general framework can provide value to any team.
Agile 101: Best practices and mistakes to avoid
To get you started, here are our list of best practices and common agile mistakes.
Basic agile 101 best practices:
✅ See failures as a learning opportunity.
✅ Embrace change and improve your adaptability skills.
✅ Improve efficiency by eliminating tasks and activities that don’t provide value.
✅ Continually improve upon your processes.
✅ Allow plans to live, breathe, and adapt.
✅ Use retrospectives to listen, learn, and improve.
✅ Prioritize the customer journey, and make decisions based on customer needs.
✅ Utilize agile tools and resources.
Common agile mistakes:
❌ Not adapting as new information is revealed or obtained.
❌ Not being on the same page as stakeholders.
❌ Not trusting the team to ideate and develop without supervision.
❌ Sitting down for sprint planning without enough information.
❌ Not incorporating retrospective insights in the following planning session.
❌ Skipping a retrospective due to lack of time or resources.
❌ Too much testing, or not knowing when the project is actually “done.”
❌ Choosing tools that don’t take a customer-centric approach.
Agile made easy
Whether you apply agile principles to an agile task management system like a personal Kanban board or use agile to develop working software, the essence is the same. In basic terms, agile is about continuous improvement. It’s a methodology, mindset, and way of viewing the world. Agile is flexible, adaptive, collaborative, and value-driven.
Easy Agile helps teams work better with agile. We design agile apps for Jira with simple, collaborative, and flexible functionality. From team agility with Easy Agile TeamRhythm, to scaled agility with Easy Agile Programs, our apps can help your agile teams work better together, and deliver for your customers.
Book a 1:1 demo to learn more about our suite of Jira tools, or contact our team if you have additional questions. We offer a free, 30-day trial, so you can try out our products before making a commitment.
Agile Best PracticeAgile Ceremonies: Your Ultimate Guide To the Four Stages
This guide looks at the four ceremonies that bring one of Agile’s most popular frameworks, Scrum, to life.
Learn how each agile ritual helps empower teams and drive performance while highlighting some tips to help your organization get the most from your ceremonies.
At a glance:
- The four agile ceremonies are Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-Up, Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective
- Ceremonies in agile facilitate visibility, transparency, and collaboration.
- Each ceremony has a clear structure and objective.
- Clear communication, flexibility, and cultural alignment are the keys to successful ceremonies.
What are the main agile ceremonies?
Agile ceremonies refer to the four events that occur during a Scrum sprint. Other forms of agile development, such as Kanban and Lean, also have similar practices.
The agile ceremonies list includes:
- Sprint Planning
- Daily Stand-Up
- Sprint Review
- Sprint Retrospective
While each ceremony is different, they facilitate the same overall purpose. The ceremonies bring teams together with a common goal under a regular rhythm, and they help teams get things done.
"With today's enterprises under increased pressure to respond quickly to the needs of their customers and stakeholders, they must bring new products to market faster and accelerate improvements to existing solutions and services." - State of Agile Report
Why are agile ceremonies important?
Agile ceremonies help organizations adapt to change and succeed. With work planned in smaller portions and over shorter timeframes, they help teams quickly shift direction and course-correct when needed. They form a key part of the broader agile approach that’s now widely adopted in organizations worldwide.
With agile ceremonies, teams in your organization can benefit from:
- Enhanced ability to manage changing priorities
- Acceleration of software development
- Increase in team productivity
- Improved business and IT alignment
It’s important to remember that while ceremonies are an essential part of Scrum, they’re just one of many rituals that help create agile teams and workplaces. To realize the true benefits of agile, you’ll need to do more than include one or more of the ceremonies into your waterfall project.
1. Sprint Planning
The Sprint Planning ceremony sets teams up for success by ensuring everyone understands the sprint goals and how to achieve them.
- Structure - The Product Owner brings the product backlog to discuss with the Development Team. The Scrum Master facilitates. Together, the Scrum Team does effort or story point estimations. The product backlog must contain all the details necessary for estimation. The Product Owner should be able to clarify any doubts regarding the product backlog.
- Attendees - The entire Scrum Team (the Development Team, Scrum Master, and Product Owner).
- Timing - At the beginning of each sprint.
- Duration - One to two hours per week of iteration. So, if you're planning a two-week sprint, your Sprint Planning should last two to four hours.
- Agile Framework - Scrum. Although Kanban teams also plan, they do it less formally and per milestone, not iteration.
Outcomes
After some team negotiation and discussion, you should have a clear decision on the work that the Development Team can complete during the sprint by the end of Sprint Planning. This is known as the sprint goal.
The sprint goal is an increment of complete work, and everyone should feel confident about the commitment.
The product backlog defines priorities that affect the order of work. Then, the Scrum Master transforms that decision into the sprint backlog.
Top tips
- Focus on collaboration rather than competition.
- Break user stories into tasks to get things more operational for the Development Team. If there's time, assign those tasks during the event.
- Factor in public holidays and any team member’s time off or vacations.
- Keep your team’s pace in mind – a track record of the time it took to implement similar user stories would be helpful.
- Focus on the product backlog and nothing else in terms of work for the sprint.
2. Daily Stand-Up
The daily stand-up brings the team together and sets everyone up for the day. The team uses this time to identify blockers and share plans for the day.
- Structure - This is an informal, standing meeting. All members of the Development Team inform everyone about what they did the day before and what they’re doing today. Members discuss any blockages they have and ask for help from the team if required. Due to time restrictions, the updates should be brief.
- Attendees - Development Team, Scrum Master, Product Owner (optional).
- Timing - Daily, usually in the morning.
- Duration - Short and sharp. No longer than 15 minutes.
- Agile framework - Scrum and Kanban.
Outcomes
The Scrum Master should clear all the blockages that slow down or prevent the Development Team from delivering. As a result, the development process might need to change.
This daily pulse check keeps the team in sync and helps build trust. Together, the group finds ways to support and help each other.
Top tips
- Use a timer to keep this meeting to 15 minutes.
- Hold your stand-up at the same time every day.
- Only discuss the work for the day ahead.
- If the team is distributed, use video conferencing with cameras on.
- Long discussions should happen after the event.
- As the stand-up encourages progress, everyone should provide an update, and everyone should feel accountable.
3. Sprint Review
The Sprint Review is the time to showcase the team’s completed work and gather feedback from stakeholders. A variety of attendees from outside the team offer valuable insights from different viewpoints. This event also helps build trust with both external and internal stakeholders.
- Structure - The Scrum Master takes on the logistics of event preparation. The Product Owner should ask stakeholders questions to gather as much feedback as possible. They should also answer any of their stakeholder’s questions.
- Attendees - Development Team, Scrum Master, Product Owner. Optionally, management, customers, developers, and other stakeholders.
- Timing - At the end of the sprint.
- Duration - In a one-week sprint, the Sprint Review lasts one hour.
- Agile framework - Scrum and Kanban. Kanban teams do these reviews after the team milestones, not sprints.
Outcomes
After this ceremony, the Product Owner might need to adjust or add to the product backlog. They might also release product functionality if it's already complete.
Top tips
- Schedule in time to rehearse before the meeting to help your team present with confidence, especially if external stakeholders are coming along.
- Don’t showcase incomplete work. Review your Sprint Planning and the original criteria if you’re not sure whether the work is complete.
- Besides product functionality, focus on user experience, customer value, and the delivered business value.
- Consider ways you can introduce a celebratory feel to acknowledge the team’s effort.
4. Sprint Retrospective
In this final scrum ceremony in the sequence, you look back on the work you’ve just done and identify ways to do things better next time. The Sprint Retrospective is a tool for risk mitigation in future sprints.
- Structure - The teams discuss what went well throughout the sprint and what went wrong. The Scrum Master should encourage the Development Team to speak up and share not only facts but also their feelings. The goal is to gather rapid feedback for continuous improvement in terms of process. It’s also an opportunity to emphasize good practices that the team adopted and should repeat.
- Attendees - Development Team, Scrum Master, Product Owner (optional).
- Timing - At the end of the sprint.
- Duration - 45 minutes per sprint week.
- Agile framework - Scrum and Kanban (occasionally).
Outcomes
After this session, the team should clearly understand the problems and the wins that happened throughout the iteration. Together, the group comes up with solutions and an action plan to prevent and identify process problems in the next sprint.
Top tips
- Focus on both facts and feelings
- Gather information that helps you focus on continuous improvement – this might include tools and relationships
- Be honest and encourage ideas that solve process-related problems
- Even if everything went well, have this meeting – retrospectives provide ongoing guidance for the next sprint.
"With the speed of change expected to continue, the need has never been greater for an operating model that keep up." - McKinsey
Agile lessons to live by
As a team of experienced agile practitioners, we’ve picked up some key learnings about what it takes to get the most out of your agile ceremonies and create the foundations of a truly agile organization.
Here are our top tips to make your ceremonies a success:
- Be deliberately present - During the ceremonies, remember to take moments to pause and remind yourself of why you’re there. Show others that you’re present by giving them full attention and using your body language. In a remote setting, angle your camera as though you’re sitting across from them, look into the lens regularly, and use a distraction-free background.
- Practice active listening - Think about what the person is saying, who they are, and what they need from you. Are they looking for a soundboard, do they need your help or opinion, or are they looking for an emotional connection?
- Understand motives - Understand the motivations of your teammates before speaking. Consider why they should care about what you’re saying by connecting your message with their own motivations. Provide context where possible to let them know why your message matters.
- Be flexible - It's important to remember that there is not a one size fits all approach to agile ways of working. What works for one team may not work for another, so you need to experiment to find out what works then tailor processes to suit your team's needs.
- Create cultural alignment - The best processes in the world won’t deliver what you need if you don’t have the culture to support their delivery. Agile ceremonies need to be supported by a culture where people are actively engaged, confident to raise issues, and value continuous improvement.
Agile ceremonies lead to better results
While it can take time for teams new to agile to adjust to agile ceremonies, they are worth the effort. By providing a clear structure and achievable outcomes, they help align everyone on the product, communication, and priorities.
The result? Agile teams that provide better quality products faster – and deliver real business outcomes.
Wherever your organization is on your agile journey, it’s worth keeping in mind that each team and each suite of products are different, so there’s no standard recipe for success. The good news is that by working within the continuous improvement mindset the agile framework promotes; you too can iterate and improve your agile ceremonies over time.
Ready to get started?
Easy Agile TeamRhythm supports your team's agile practices in Jira. Supporting your team from planning right through to retrospective, TeamRhythm helps you and your team work better together to deliver value to your customers.
Features include:
- Agile sprint and version planning tool - Planning is quick and easy when you create and estimate issues on the story map. View your work under initiatives and epics, and see swimlane stats at a glance, ensuring team capacity is filled but not overcommitted
- Agile story mapping - Map the customer journey using initiatives, epics, and stories alongside your agile Jira boards. Quickly and easily add new or existing stories inside the story map. Drag and drop to prioritize by value to the customer.
- Product backlog refinement - Escape your flat backlog and view your work on the story map matrix. Drag and drop issues to prioritize or schedule. Quickly update story summaries and story point estimates with inline editing for a better backlog.
- Team retrospectives - Celebrate success, gain insights, and share learnings with team retrospective boards for scrum and kanban, encouraging collaboration and transparency, so you and your team are continuously improving.
Agile Best PracticeBeing Agile vs Doing Agile
Being agile vs doing agile – what’s the difference?
Organizations around the world have recognized the need to respond rapidly to meet the challenges of constant change. As a result, they’re racing to adopt agile ways of working, with the pandemic accelerating agile adoption.
Those who get it right can make a powerful impact on their bottom line and their competitive edge. But for others, the benefits may yet to be seen.
This is where ‘doing agile’ versus ‘being agile’ can make all the difference. Because to truly reap the benefits of agile methodology, organizations need to shift from doing to being.
This article will explain the difference between being agile vs doing agile. Plus, we’ll take you through some of the common challenges many organizations face in their agile journey.
Key points
- To realize the full potential of agile ways of working, teams must cultivate an agile mindset as well as adopt agile processes.
- Moving from ‘doing agile’ to ‘being agile’ takes time, coaching, and a new approach to management.
- Done right, being agile can amplify customer satisfaction, employee engagement, growth, and profitability.
Why agile, and why now?
Agile had already been rising in popularity for over 20 years, but once the pandemic hit, this growth accelerated.
Across every industry, being able to deliver digital experiences is now crucial. Organizations now need to act and think like software companies, with a laser focus on the customer’s online experience. Together with an active approach to finding customers, you need to deliver real value to stand out from competitors.
For organizations looking to survive - and thrive - in this environment, many are turning to agile frameworks to rapidly add customer value and drive business results. Being agile allows teams to:
- Make the complex simple – by working within a clear, structured framework, chaos turns to order.
- Maintain a clear overview – agile teams have a shared understanding of their progress towards their goals.
- Replicate success – if a team finds an effective way to deliver results, they can repurpose and share solutions across the organization.
- Create an aligned, purposeful culture – when hundreds of people across one organization form dozens of agile teams, they build a stable backbone, walking the same path towards the same goal.
"Agile organizations, viewed as living systems, have evolved to thrive in an unpredictable, rapidly changing environment. These organizations are both stable and dynamic. They focus on customers, fluidly adapt to environmental changes, and are open, inclusive, and nonhierarchical; they evolve continually and embrace uncertainty and ambiguity. Such organizations, we believe, are far better equiped than traditional ones for future."
What does it mean to be agile?
Many organizations incorporate a few agile processes to manage projects. But that doesn’t mean teams have fully understood and embraced the agile methodology. It could be that they’re ‘doing agile’ rather than actually ‘being agile’.
Here’s the difference between the two:
Doing agile
‘Doing agile’ is the misconception that if you do agile things your company will become agile and responsive to change. Organizations that have fallen into this trap may go through the motions of some agile processes, such as daily stand-ups, sprints, and retrospectives. Teams are structured to be small, cross-functional, and collaborative. But by stopping there, those teams don’t become truly agile and they may struggle to see results.
While agile ceremonies, tools, and structures are critical in implementation, they are only part of what makes an organization agile.
Being agile
‘Being agile’ means you incorporate the above activities but go beyond the processes. This means applying an agile mindset and agile values to all areas of the organization. Teams will need training to master the agile mindset and push through any challenges along the way. It takes more time and effort than simply doing agile, but it’s critical if you want to reap the benefits.
What’s an agile mindset?
Embracing an agile mindset means understanding and living its four core values. To be agile, you need to:
- Respect people - Recognize that people are critical to the success of your organization. Ensure people share common goals, feel safe and empowered to share ideas, and adopt a ‘we’ versus ‘I’ mentality.
- Optimize flow - Build in quality at each increment so you can identify issues and course-correct early. This helps maximize value and minimize waste while creating a consistent, sustainable flow of work.
- Encourage innovation - Foster experimentation with collaboration, constructive feedback, and autonomy. Schedule time and space for creativity and ideas to flow.
- Relentlessly improve - Keep in mind that there is no endpoint with the agile mindset. It’s about continuous improvement, so you need to continually reflect and improve future processes as part of an ongoing practice.
To take these values and make them the foundation of working across your organization, you need to combine agile processes with an agile mindset. Without the agile mindset, you’re not ‘being agile’, and your processes won’t deliver your organization’s full potential.
"The agile mindset is a thought process that involves undersatdning, collaborating, learning, and staying flexible to achieve high-performing results. By combining the agile mindset with processes and tools, team can adapt to change and deliver incremental value to their customers."
Agile processes and tools aren’t enough
Agile processes, including the ceremonies, tools, and apps, are there to support the mindset of the team. But without getting the mindset right across your organization, you won’t be truly agile.
Fostering the agile mindset gives an organization the ability to rapidly move in any given direction at any given time to deliver the best value to customers. Teams who’ve mastered agile are usually:
- Autonomous and empowered to make decisions around the product and customer experience.
- Able to adapt to change quickly.
- Always willing to learn something new.
Engaged with a shared purpose and collaborative culture.
"It's about being able to pivot to change. Whether that's in terms of people, or resources or budget - whatever that looks like for an organization. If you're able to quickly shift from one area of focus to another before your competitor does, then you have a competitive advantage in the market."
- Sean Blake, Head of Marketing, Easy Agile
Common challenges to look out for as you move from doing agile to being agile
The sooner you can act and move from doing agile towards being agile, the sooner your customers, employees, and your bottom line will benefit.
Here are a few common challenges and tips to overcome them.
- People might hold onto old habits
People find change hard, especially when habits are ingrained. You might find some people dig their heels in, clinging to the old way of doing things. It’s important to remember it can take time, and people will need support to learn new ways of working. Be sure to bring in plenty of opportunities for feedback and discussion so you can reiterate as a team to find a process that works for your organization. - It’s not just the team who needs to be coached
Being agile is a mindset for the entire organization, including managers and executives. If your leaders don’t understand and support agile, it will be hard to get traction and shift old processes and hierarchies. Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches need to spend time coaching leaders to develop new agile mindsets and capabilities. - For many organizations, being agile requires a new style of management
The traditional command-and-control management style may have worked in the industrial age. But now it’s a mismatch for the way organizations and people need to work today, and it doesn’t support the agile mindset. To be agile, teams need the trust, autonomy, and ability to take an idea through to execution without any roadblocks. Senior executives must get behind this multifaceted cultural-transformation effort for this to happen.
Are you ready to be agile?
Moving beyond agile processes to scale an agile mindset across an organization isn’t something you can tackle overnight. It takes time, effort, training, and leadership support to internalize agile values and move beyond the command mindset of the past.
You may face challenges along the way, you’ll discover there’s always more to learn, and you must be agile in your adoption of agile.
But the prize for true agility is significant, including increasing customer satisfaction, boosting employee engagement, and improving productivity - making it well worth the investment.
Agility helps modern organizations thrive through change in an uncertain and unpredictable world. For most of us, it’s no longer a desirable way of working - it’s essential.