By Tom Preval, Senior Scrum Master and Delivery Community Lead at Leighton
Agility is the hallmark of modern organisations. It reflects their ability to swiftly and effectively adapt to evolving market conditions, shifting customer demands, and unexpected disruptions. It embodies a mindset and approach that prioritise continuous learning, rapid decision-making, and transparency, underpinned by a culture, processes, and systems designed to thrive in an ever-changing environment.
For most businesses, agility is no longer a luxury, but rather a necessity to stay competitive. Yet adopting agile or becoming agile is more than implementing new workflows or tools. It requires a fundamental shift in mindset and culture, something that is often easier to talk about than it is to actually execute.
While the path to agility is unique for every organisation, there are common success factors that can smooth the transformation journey. Here we’ll cover five key factors that can help ensure a successful agile transformation.
1. Leadership commitment and vision
Agile transformation starts at the top. Leadership must champion change by articulating a clear vision, demonstrating commitment through actions, and undergoing the same formal training as their teams. When leaders actively participate, lead by example, and foster an environment of trust, they set the tone for the entire organisation. This alignment ensures that teams feel supported, and that agility becomes a strategic priority, not just a tactical change.
2. Empowering teams
One of the core principles of agility is empowering teams to make decisions and take ownership of their work. Businesses must transition from traditional command and control structures to a more decentralised approach. This isn’t to say that all decisions and actions become decentralised, but rather we empower teams with the autonomy to make decisions, innovate and adapt. Providing teams with the right training, tools, and frameworks is crucial, but equally important is creating an environment where teams can experiment, fail, and learn without fear of blame.
3. Cultural transformation
An agile transformation will fail without a corresponding shift in organisational culture. Organisations need to foster a culture of collaboration, transparency, and continuous improvement. This often requires breaking down legacy silos and structures while encouraging cross-functional teams to work together toward shared goals. Leaders should model behaviours that reflect agility, such as openness to feedback and a willingness to adapt. Often organisations will focus on embedding agile practices and lose sight of the values. Embedding agile values into everyday practices helps ensure that your transformation becomes sustainable.
4. Customer-centric focus
Agility is ultimately about delivering value to customers, internal and external, faster, and more effectively. Organisations must shift their focus from outputs (how much work teams get done) to outcomes (how much value teams have delivered). This means actively engaging with customers to understand their needs and incorporating their feedback into the development process. Techniques such as design thinking and user story mapping along with the frequent delivery of incremental value help keep the customer at the heart of teams and the wider organisation’s decision-making.
5. Measurement and adaptation
What gets measured gets improved. Tracking progress through meaningful metrics is essential to understand whether the transformation is yielding the desired results. However, the key is to focus on metrics that reflect agility, such as cycle time, customer satisfaction, business value and team engagement, rather than traditional performance measures like utilisation. Regular retrospectives at all levels of the organisation, and events such as the inspect and adapt event as seen in the SAFe framework ensure continuous learning and adaptation, helping teams to learn, refine processes and address roadblocks as they arise.
Agile transformations are not a one-size-fits-all endeavour, just look at all the frameworks you can pick from. Nor is it a destination. It’s an ongoing journey of learning and adaptation. By focusing on leadership commitment, team empowerment, cultural change, customer-centricity, and continuous improvement, organisations can navigate the complexities of their agile transformation with confidence. The rewards for doing so? Greater responsiveness, improved customer satisfaction, and enhanced employee engagement make the effort worthwhile. Organisations that embrace these success factors will not only thrive in their agile journey but also position themselves to excel amongst the competition.
leighton.com