The State of Agile survey is among the most cited annual surveys in the field of Agile techniques and practices. This year’s 15th State of Agile Survey report by Digital.ai makes an in-depth research on the milestones along Agile’s journey, from its roots in software development to its current widescale adoption, driving business value by increasing performance and quality in software development.
The 2020 global pandemic brought many challenges to organizations and accelerated the need for their digital transformation and the adoption of Agile not only within the software development department but within the rest of the company. With this article, we aim to reflect on the findings in the report and relate them to our practices as a company that helps enterprises in their Digital Transformation journey.
Key Report Findings
- Remote/ Hybrid Workforce – this year we witness a dramatic increase in remote working as 25% of the respondents say that they will remain fully remote once the pandemic is over, while 56% support the hybrid way of working and say they will be visiting the office on a regular basis but not daily.
- Agile Adoption in non-IT lines of Business – the numbers show twice the increase from last year in Agile adoption within Finance, Human Resources, and Marketing.
- DevOps and Value Stream Management Initiatives – 3/4 of respondents find DevOps transformation to be an important part of achieving their goals, while 2/3 are part of or planning a VSM initiative.
- Barriers to Agile Adoption – inconsistencies in processes and practices, cultural clashes, general organizational resistance to change, lack of skills and experience, absence of leadership participation, inadequate management support and sponsorship.
- Agile Techniques and Practices – 66% highlight Scrum as the Agile methodology that they follow most closely at a team level. Moreover, four out of five respondents name daily standups, retrospectives, and sprint/iteration planning among the most widely used practices.
- Scaling Agile – the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) remains the most popular scaling framework with 37% of the respondents nominating it as the dominant approach.
How to sustain your Agile adoption initiative?
- High-tech space/corner for hybrid and onsite meetings
Almost every organization around the world experienced the remote working consequences forced by the pandemic and ITCE was no exception. Our team adapted to the fully remote approach after working in an office since 1998 and delivering on-site training courses, certification exams, and consulting sessions with clients. We had to transform not only our internal operational processes but also the services that we delivered to our customers who expected us to guide them through their digital transformation in such challenging times. As a result, we created SpaceAssembly, as a place that could satisfy the needs of our customers in the digital age. Our new workspace inspired some of our customers to create similar small high-tech spaces within their offices where they could effectively collaborate with their remote colleagues during daily work on projects and Agile rituals.
- Online Collaborative Platform
In addition to an appropriate technical set-up for hybrid meetings, teams also need a tool to support their Agile practices and projects. Since the pandemic, our team discovered the online collaborative whiteboard platform, Miro.com, which transformed our meetings, and everyday work as a team. Some of our customers have also adopted the tool as a way to improve their cross-functional teamwork. As the report states, most of the organizations going through an Agile transformation are also adopting processes like daily standups, retrospectives, and sprint/iteration planning. Miro.com has great templates that your team could use directly to work on during the mentioned Agile practices or you could take advantage of the broad specter of capabilities and create something that would serve your team’s needs and objectives.
- Leadership & Management Involvement
In the last two years, our training and consulting team observes a significant increase in the demand for Scaled Agile trainings and consulting services. We witness how some of our clients started expanding their Agile practices within the non-IT departments, however, we believe that in Bulgaria the numbers for Agile adoption in non-IT lines of business still haven’t reached the ones stated in the survey. Considering the barriers to Agile adoption we identify one major solution that ensures the smooth adoption and scaling of Agile practices. Our clients confirm that nominating internal change agents to be the main drivers of the transformation, has a notable impact on the engagement and motivation of the whole organization. Involving people on a management and leadership level in the transformational team has also proven to reduce the resistance to change.
- Acquiring the Right Skills & Experience
Last but not least, organizations that are still at the beginning of their transformational journey need to acquire skills and experience to successfully continue the initiative on their own at a later stage. To reach this point our clients go through various role-based certification exams, workshops, and consulting sessions that also include training courses from various categories like Microsoft, Cloud, Architect, and Service Management to grasp the bigger picture and communicate successfully with the rest of the areas within the organization.
If your organization is ready to take on the Agile transformational journey, don’t hesitate to contact us!
Book a meeting with us!