Agility
Agility is the ability to react quickly in a complex world. Agility is characterized by five principles:
- Empowerment and self-organization
- Early and regular deliveries
- Review and adjustment
- Transparency
- Use of a cycle
Agility is more than IT
For most people, agility is an IT topic. So the Agile Manifesto only about "software development". Wikipedia also only talks about Agile software development.
Agility is not limited to IT: Any type of team, unit or organization can work in an agile way. These can be development teams in IT, but also service teams, etc. Precisely because agility is being used more and more - e.g. in connection with Organization 2.0 - it is important to have a clear understanding of what agility is and what it is not.
Agility is more than Scrum
Agility is more than Scrum. Scrum is the most widespread agile framework for product development, but a DevOps team with Scrumban also works in an agile way. A service team with Kanban is also agile.
The five principles in detail
1. empowerment and self-organization
Teams are empowered and responsible to make all necessary decisions to deliver the result. They are cross-functional. Teams plan their own work and decide how best to carry it out. They can communicate with each other independently and without obstacles.
2. early and regular deliveries
Every employee focuses on delivering what creates value for the customer. Early and regular deliveries ensure a steady flow of results. This allows the teams to continuously review and adapt.
3. review and adjustment
Teams regularly reflect on how they can become more effective and efficient. This relates to both the product and the way the team works. Such a review and adjustment also takes place at the organizational level in order to question and improve results, working methods and organizational structures.
4. transparency
Teams exchange information and knowledge with each other to promote collaboration so that everyone can contribute to the achievement of goals in the best possible way. Direct personal contact is the most effective way of exchanging information.
5. use of a cycle
Teams use a cadence to give their work a rhythm. A beat ensures regularity and reliability. It therefore supports measuring and learning. A common beat for several teams makes it possible to synchronize them and thus keep the work flowing across teams. In Scrum, for example, the rhythm is the sprint; this gives planning, implementation, review and retrospective a common rhythm. In Kanban, a separate cadence is used for different events such as queue replenishment or delivery.
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