Author: Elizabeth Walsh

The concept of “Agile” has been tied to software development mainly because of the 2001 publication, The Manifesto for Agile Software Development (a.k.a. the “Agile Manifesto”) which popularized this idea. Written by a group of software professionals, this artifact helped many teams apply a new way of working, which arguably revolutionized the way software applications are designed and delivered.

What is not commonly known is that the philosophy and values behind this Manifesto originated decades ago from manufacturing; Toyota Motors was the very first organization that conceived values such as short feedback loops, optimize flow of work, limiting work-in-progress, etc. This also means that the concepts and practices of Agile can be applied to almost any type of work that you do – from recruiting to marketing to business development, Agile practices can accelerate the delivery of nearly any product or service.

This sounds too good to be true, correct? Let’s take a closer look at a few examples of how Agile techniques can be applied to non-software projects.

Agile is NOT just for software?!

In my experience working with Agile teams over the past few years, I discovered a trend that is somewhat surprising – many people believe that “Agile” is synonymous to “Scrum”, which is not the case. This misconception has often led to the belief that if you want to “do Agile”, you must “do Scrum”, or apply Scrum-like practices. This is simply not the case. It is very possible to apply Agile principles and practices without adhering to the guidelines offered by the Scrum framework. Why does this matter, you may wonder. This is an interesting take on the Agile approach because you can apply Agile practices without practicing all of the events that Scrum requires, which means that Agile is potentially much simpler than you imagined!

How to apply Agile techniques even if you are not developing software

Here are a few practices (and questions) to consider when you are working on a non-software/non-technical project:

Start with what you do now

There is no need to abandon everything you do today for the sake of “doing Agile”. It is entirely possible (and likely) that many of the processes and/or tools that you are using today provide value and are quite effective, even if you have a desire to improve what you do now. It is absolutely okay to keep many of the tools and procedures that are already in place. The trick is to explore what makes sense to change. More on that shortly.

Consider where your pain-points are

What is keeping you or your team up at night? Where are the inefficiencies? What do your customers complain about the most? These are all questions that could lead to interesting insights if you dig a little deeper and spend some time to assess the root cause. These repetitive issues will likely provide you with a great starting point to apply Agile methods. A few examples are: long feedback cycles, lack of visibility into state of tasks and/or projects, quality issues, scope/requirements creep, etc.

What work can you complete in a short period of time?

Looking at the work your team is doing, how can you break down the work into smaller units? This may take a bit of experimentation, but if you can deconstruct work into less complex pieces, you could improve your ability to deliver a working solution more quickly, thus giving your customer an earlier view and the opportunity to provide feedback.

How often does your team reflect on how they collaborate?

When was the last time they thought about how to improve their processes and/or tools? Agile way of working is inherently iterative in nature, which means there should be natural checkpoints for the team to inspect their way of working and make adjustments as needed. The mindset of continuous improvement is not always easy for teams to adopt, but it will provide benefits once the team can establish a healthy routine of regularly reviewing how they work together.

How much work is your team trying to do at the same time?

Multi-tasking is a big “no no” in Agile because it takes away focus and erodes customer confidence when you start a lot of work but finish very little. Limiting your “WIP”, or Work In Progress, is one of the key tenets of Agile that is often forgotten. Reducing your WIP sounds easy enough to do, but it is often quite difficult for most of us who are accustomed to doing so, and it will require practice and persistence.

How often do you showcase your work to the customer?

Providing visibility and being transparent about successes and failures is not always easy, especially if you have a demanding customer who is used to getting what they ask for. A key tenet of Agile is close collaboration with the customer, which means partnering with them and being open and honest about everything. Again, not always easy to do, but it will build trust and confidence over time if you can work with the initial challenges.

Conclusion

In closing, you may have noticed that in this article, I did not suggest any technical practices that are specifically related to any Agile framework. While some of these ideas may feel a bit vague and general, I am hoping that you can find a real-world project with which you can try some of these techniques. You can see that none of these approaches are specifically intended for software projects, which means they can be applied to just about any type of project that you are working on. My final recommendation: choose a project that is not too small but not mission-critical so that you can apply one or two of these methods as an experiment. If you can make a commitment to giving this a try, I guarantee that you will learn something unexpected.

This is the second in a three-part series of articles covering the POETIC Leadership approach to Lean-Agile leadership, authored by Alex Gray, a Lean Agile Practice Lead at Cprime. Click below to visit Parts One and Three:

• Part One: Personal and Organizational

• Part Three: Intelligent and Curious

In the first article of this series, we discussed why organizations that wish to employ Lean-Agile methods must promote a culture that supports that way of working. And, we began discussing what that culture looks like and how they can develop it—first on a personal level, then organizationally.

We recommend reviewing that article first, if you haven’t already, to get some context for what we’ll be discussing in this article: the emotional and team thinking components of the POETIC Leadership model.

E – Emotional

Emotion should not rule decision making, especially for leaders. However, it would be detrimental to overlook the importance of how emotion plays into productivity, employee engagement, and operational effectiveness. Hence the emphasis placed on Emotional Intelligence in recent years. In developing a culture that supports Lean-Agile ways of working, an effective leader will focus on fostering deep respect for people, emotional empathy, and psychological safety.

Deep Respect For People

Emotional Leaders have a deep respect for people, which in turn creates a positive and supportive working environment and a culture of trust and collaboration within the organization.

Having emotional awareness sends a message that leaders value the contributions and the perspectives of each individual. This can help to build trust and rapport, and make employees feel valued and supported.

Deep respect for people can also help leaders create more inclusive and diverse workplaces, and to foster a sense of belonging among employees. This can lead to increased job satisfaction, improved morale and better performance.

Emotional Empathy

Effective leaders show emotional empathy, which is the ability to understand and share the emotions of others. It requires them to recognize the emotional state of another person and to respond to that emotion in a way that is appropriate and helpful.

People who have high levels of emotional empathy are often good at making others feel understood and supported, and can build strong emotional connections with others. This can be a valuable skill for leaders as it can help them build trust and rapport with their team members and create a positive, supportive working environment.

Psychological Safety

Leaders with strong emotional intelligence create a workplace and environment that embodies psychological safety.

Psychological safety refers to a workplace environment in which individuals feel comfortable expressing themselves and their ideas without fear of retribution or negative consequences. This type of environment is typically characterized by trust, respect and inclusiveness, and it allows the team members to take risks and make mistakes without fear of being punished or ostracized.

Psychological safety is important because it really allows team members to fully engage with their work and to contribute their best ideas and efforts. It also improves collaboration, encourages creativity, and improves overall performance within the team and the organization.

T – Team thinking

Another aspect of effective leadership in a Lean-Agile environment is a mindset that revolves around the team as a unit, in addition to the individuals who make it up. This involves both the leader’s attitude and thought process and that of the team members themselves. Factors to consider include team motivation, team ownership, decentralization of decision making, and a focus on long-lived teams.

Team Motivation

Team Thinking leaders understand the value of creating and motivating teams. Agile teams are typically self-motivated, autonomous, and take responsibility for the work they’re doing. However, there are a few ways that a leader can motivate the team and help them stay engaged and committed to the work.

First, leaders should provide clear goals and objectives, and regularly communicate with team members about their progress towards meeting those goals. This can help team members to stay focused and motivated, and to understand how their work contributes to the overall success of the organization.

Leaders should recognize and reward the contributions of team members towards team goals. This can include praising individuals for their hard work and achievements, and providing opportunities for professional development and growth.

Overall, the key to motivating agile teams is to provide the support and resources they need to own their work, and to recognize and reward their contributions to the success of the organization.

Team Ownership

Team Thinking Leaders need to help create team ownership.

Team ownership refers to the idea that the team handles all aspects of product development from start to finish. This includes defining goals and objectives, developing roadmaps and strategies to achieve those goals, and taking ownership of the work to complete the product.

Team ownership is important because it allows teams to become flexible and adaptable, to respond quickly to challenges and changes, and to promote the ongoing need for collaboration within the team. This helps build trust and rapport among the team members.

To foster a sense of team ownership, leaders should encourage team members to take on leadership roles at all levels and to make decisions about their work. Leaders should provide the needed support and resources, and create an environment in which the team members feel valued. This can help build a strong sense of ownership and can then lead to improved performance and more successful outcomes.

Decentralized Decision Making

Leaders who employ Team Thinking also need to embrace decentralized decision-making. Not all decisions need to be made by leaders. Often, the teams and the team members closest to the situation have more knowledge and expertise to decide. Leaders need to create clear goals, objectives, guidelines, and frameworks for decision-making.

Decentralized decision-making can help to create more agile and responsive organizations, which leads to improved performance and more successful outcomes and can empower teams. This doesn’t mean the team makes all decisions, but they should make those that are frequent and where the teams have the best knowledge and understanding.

Long Lived Teams

Team Thinking leaders need to understand the value of long-lived teams. In Lean-Agile organizations, we aim to have long-lived teams working on long-lived products.

Long-lived teams are really valuable because they can help organizations save time and money by reducing the need to constantly form and disband teams for different work. It can lead to more consistent and high-quality outcomes as team members become more familiar with each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and can work together more efficiently.

Furthermore, long-lived teams can provide a sense of stability and support for team members, which can lead to improved morale and job satisfaction. This, in turn, leads to better retention of top talent, and more committed and engaged employees.

Overall, long-lived teams can provide organizations with several benefits, including improved collaboration, decision-making cost savings, and increased job satisfaction amongst their team members.

Join us again for the third and final article in this series where we’ll discuss the last two aspects of POETIC Leadership: Intelligent and Curious.

This is the first in a three-part series of articles covering the POETIC Leadership approach to Lean-Agile leadership, authored by Alex Gray, a Lean Agile Practice Lead at Cprime. Click below to visit Parts Two and Three:

• Part Two: Emotional and Team Thinking

• Part Three: Intelligent and Curious

In Lean-Agile environments, the organizational culture must support Lean and Agile ways of working.

In the context of these articles, we will use the following definitions:

• Lean-Agile environments: organizations, products, or teams who do, or desire to follow Lean and Agile practices
• Culture: How do we do things, and how our people react to events

Without a supporting culture, any Lean-Agile adoption is likely to stay overly formal or limited to localized success. But, with the right supporting culture, the benefits of Lean and Agile can permeate the organization, creating better flow, increased efficiency, greater innovation, and the delivery of real customer value.

In the 2022 State of Agile Report, the survey shows that culture, leadership, and consistency are three key challenges in the way of successful Agile adoption in an organization.

To solve these problems, the culture needs to change. But, that’s a tricky concept.

John Seddon, an occupational psychologist and author, explains, “Attempting to change an organization’s culture is a folly, it always fails. People’s behavior (the culture) is a product of the system; when you change the system, people’s behavior changes.”

The Systems Thinking definition of a system is, “an entity with interrelated and interdependent parts; it is defined by its boundaries and it is more than the sum of its parts.”

Organizations are systems made up of people, teams, departments, services, tools, processes, products, and many other interconnected parts.

Leaders define these systems. So, to create a culture that supports Lean-Agile adoption, successful leaders must understand what it means to work in an agile way so they can help design and lead their system to be as Lean and Agile as it can be. These leaders can exist at all levels of the organization. But all of them must display a set of skills and capabilities that they can use to catalyze, enable, and support the process of system-level change.

They need POETIC Leadership:

Personal

• Self-awareness
• Mindfulness
• Powerful influencing
• Leadership style

Organizational

• Organizational structure

Emotional

• Deep respect for people
• Emotional empathy
• Psychological safety

Team Thinking

• Team motivation
• Team ownership
• Decentralized decision making
• Long lived teams

Intelligent

• IQ
• Lean-Agile
• Business decision making
• Domain knowledge

Curious

• Exploring
• Experimental
• Innovation
• Learning
• Growth mindset
• GEMBA

In this article, we will focus on the first two aspects of POETIC Leadership. To explore more, read parts two and three:

• Part Two: Emotional and Team Thinking (link coming soon)
• Part Three: Intelligent and Curious (link coming soon)

P – Personal Leadership

Personal Leadership involves how leaders act among the people they lead, and the impression their actions leave. Done well, it is leading by example. This is really important because it demonstrates the behavior the leader expects from everyone else. Personal leaders encourage strong stakeholder engagement, which is built through continuous communication to build trust, commitment, innovation and collaboration. When leaders exhibit the qualities and characteristics they want to see in their teams, they can inspire and motivate others to do the same. Team members develop trust and confidence, and are much more likely to follow an authentic leader.

Self-awareness

Leadership requires self-awareness. Good leaders have a conscious understanding of their character, behaviors, motives, and how these things affect their leadership abilities. To show self-awareness, leaders must understand their own strengths and weaknesses, so there is real value in spending time to research for yourself what you know, and what you don’t know. A common technique to help with this is Johari’s Window.

As a leader, knowing the areas that are unknown to you:

• Helps you focus on developing the skills and abilities that are most important to your role
• Helps you understand the impact your words and actions might have on others
• Guides your decision-making and subsequent actions
• Makes you more aware of the potential risks and uncertainties around a situation or decision
• Helps you to communicate more effectively and avoid causing harm or conflict
• Helps you build and maintain good relationships with your teams
• Helps you know when others are in a better position to make certain decisions

People are more likely to trust and respect leaders who are self-aware, and can show empathy and understanding.

Mindfulness

Effective leaders are mindful and intentional. Mindfulness is the practice of bringing your attention to the present moment without judgment. It involves paying attention to your thoughts, feelings, and sensations, and letting go of judgment and preconceptions.

The goal of mindfulness is to create and cultivate a greater sense of awareness and understanding of yourself, the world around you, and how that might impact your team members. Mindfulness mitigates reactive tendencies—a serious barrier to effective leadership. Some leaders lash out, others shut down, while some “go along to get along.”

Powerful Influencing

Leaders can have great power in organizations (often exhibited by a “command and control” leadership style). On the other hand, in an agile context, leaders should be powerful influencers; someone that supports physiological safety and who can use their ability to influence the thoughts, beliefs, and actions of others without always having to tell them what to do. If a leader is constantly telling people what to do or how to do it, the teams are always going to revert to that leader and ask them what to do. If a leader can use influence to get others to decide how to do things by themselves, then they’re going to create greater autonomy, which supports agility.

Leadership Style

Finally, knowing your personal leadership style is important because it can really help you understand your strengths and weaknesses as a leader. This, in turn, lets you adapt your approach to leadership when different situations and team members benefit from different leadership styles and no one style is necessarily better than the other. The key is understanding the different styles and where you fit in the spectrum.

Some common leadership styles are:

• Transformational leadership: Transformational leaders inspire and motivate others to achieve their full potential. They focus on creating a vision and a sense of purpose, and on empowering team members to take ownership and responsibility for their work.
• Servant leadership: Servant leaders prioritize the needs and well-being of their team members. They put the interests of the team ahead of their own and focus on supporting and empowering others to succeed.
• Charismatic leadership: Charismatic leaders are magnetic and inspiring. They have a natural ability to engage and motivate others, and they often have a strong personal following.
• Autocratic leadership: Autocratic leaders have a high level of control and decision-making power. They make decisions independently and expect their team members to follow orders without question.
• Democratic leadership: Democratic leaders involve their team members in decision making and encourage collaboration and open communication. They value the input and perspectives of others and strive to create a participatory and inclusive work environment.

O – Organizational

Organizational Leadership involves understanding how to align the organization to strategic vision and goals, and to create the right structure to deliver value to our customers and business effectively and efficiently.

Lean

Organizational Leadership uses Lean Thinking, which is a philosophy that emphasizes the continuous improvement of a process, the elimination of waste, and the optimization of efficiency in order to provide the highest possible value to customers. It involves empowering employees to promote transparency, identify and address in-efficiency in their work, and encourage a culture of continuous improvement within the organization. This can help leaders to create more agile and responsive organizations that are better able to adapt to changing market conditions and customer needs.

Value Stream Mapping

Organizational Leaders want to improve the flow of value through the organization. Value stream thinking is a fundamental mindset a leader needs for business success. A Lean Thinking technique leaders may use to improve the flow of work is Value Stream Mapping.

Karen Martin describes Value Stream Mapping as a practical and highly effective way to see and resolve disconnects, redundancies, and gaps in how work gets done. It involves creating a high-level diagram or map of all the key components of the production process—from requirements gathering to product delivery. The goal of value stream mapping is to quickly identify bottlenecks, ways to improve the flow of work, and non-value activities. Acting on these findings results in a reduction in cycle-time, which improves the delivery of value to your customers.

This could be a simple change in process, or you may need to redefine entire organizational structures. It can involve complex decisions, but making those decisions yields valuable benefits.

Organizational Structure

A Lean-Agile organizational structure is designed to be nimble, flexible, responsive, and adaptable. It is based upon the principles of Agile and Lean, including

• customer collaboration
• iterative and adaptive planning
• a value-centric approach
• continuous improvement

It may include product focused teams that are

• self managing
• cross functional
• possibly with a flat hierarchy with fewer levels of management
• empowered to make decisions and take ownership of their work

Lean-Agile organizations are designed to be fast-paced, respond to changes in the market and customer needs, and enable innovation. The goal of designing organizational structures is to enable efficient product delivery, and support collaboration, quick decision-making, and learning.

Systems Thinking

Organizational Leaders will leverage Systems Thinking, a way of thinking and a problem-solving approach that focuses on understanding how parts of their systems interact and influence each other, and how the system behaves and develops over time. It recognizes that systems comprise people, processes, organization structures, hierarchies, tools, and many other items that are all interconnected.

As a leader, you need to look at the big picture and consider the long-term consequences of decisions and actions in your systems; anticipate what might change and manage these complex interactions between systems. You need to be open-minded, curious, proactive, and able to adapt and learn from what is happening in your systems.

In Part Two of this series, we will address two more aspects of POETIC Leadership: Emotional and Team Thinking.

Read Part Two now!

In today’s fast-paced and highly competitive business environment, teams increasingly emphasize efficiency, productivity, and customer satisfaction. “Work smarter, not harder” is a popular catchphrase, as the old approach of working long hours with excessive planning is no longer practical in 2023.

With consumers expecting nothing less than prompt responses and instant gratification, businesses cannot afford to waste time and resources on elaborate strategies that may or may not become irrelevant once executed. Thus, companies increasingly turn to the Lean-Agile methodology as a solution.

By integrating Lean principles of reducing waste and maximizing value with enterprise agility, companies can:

• Establish a streamlined, efficient, and adaptable workflow
• Cut costs
• Quickly respond to evolving customer needs and market trends
• Deliver continuous and incremental improvements to products and services
• Improve customer engagement and communication
• Promote a culture of collaboration and problem-solving
• Provide customers with the highest quality products and services in the shortest possible time

This article explains the Lean-Agile methodology in-depth, including practical examples of how various industries can leverage it.

What is the Lean-Agile Methodology?

The Lean-Agile methodology combines two crucial business mindsets to prioritize speed, flexibility, collaboration, project management, and product development. It merges Lean principles, rooted in manufacturing—minimizing waste, and maximizing value—with Agile practices rooted in software—delivering value quickly, adapting to change, and welcoming customer feedback.

Lean-Agile principles holistically complement each other and improve operations and outcomes. They enable organizations to achieve better results while using less time and resources. They foster cross-functional collaboration and teamwork to leverage employees’ skills and expertise. The concepts encourage continuous learning, experimentation, waste elimination, streamlined processes, improved product quality, and higher customer satisfaction.

What Industries Can Leverage the Lean-Agile Methodology?

The Lean-Agile methodology is not limited to any industry or sector, but the following four industries have seen notable success leveraging the Lean-Agile process.

Software Development

In 2001, 17 disgruntled software developers created the Agile Manifesto as a framework to improve their industry. Today, their manifesto remains a blueprint for the Agile practices integral to the Lean-Agile method.

Spotify exemplifies a software development company implementing Agile practices in the Lean-Agile methodology. The company employs small, cross-functional teams that work autonomously to develop and deliver new features to users swiftly. These teams oversee work based on their specific areas of expertise and use user feedback to respond promptly to changing requirements while continuously improving the product.

Manufacturing

The manufacturing industry was the first to implement Lean principles to make project management and product development more cost-effective by eliminating waste, optimizing processes, improving productivity, and maximizing value.

Toyota pioneered Lean manufacturing approaches to where its focus on waste reduction, increased efficiency, productivity, and continuous improvements positioned it as the world’s most valuable automotive brand.

Healthcare

The Lean-Agile methodology can help the healthcare industry improve patient outcomes, reduce costs, and better use communication and feedback.

Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital is a great example of a healthcare provider that successfully applied the Lean-Agile methodology. Since adopting a Lean-Agile framework, the hospital redesigned annual wellness visits, with cross-functional teams collaborating based on skills and insights. Moreover, the hospital iterated and received feedback from clinicians and patients to streamline the care delivery process. They could rapidly change course when needed.

Finance

The Lean-Agile methodology can help finance teams streamline operations and increase efficiency by implementing continuous improvement, collaboration, agile budgeting, value stream mapping, and data-driven decision-making.

ING, a 300-year-old multinational bank, adopted Lean-Agile and became Germany’s first agile bank in 2015. ING pioneered a transformation model named “PACE” that aims to:

• Streamline project management and software development processes
• Support quicker launches of new products and services
• Connect design thinking, lean startup, and agile methods with the needs of the ING-adapted process

PACE also forces ING to validate its innovations with customers to ensure that resources are allocated to improve their lives.

The Key Takeaway

Adopting a Lean-Agile framework is not an overnight process. It requires a significant cultural shift. Business leaders must prioritize continuous improvement, collaboration, and transparency to succeed. To do this, organizations must gain a deep understanding of their workflows, processes, and goals.

However, while time-consuming, the result is often worth the effort. By prioritizing these values and building upon the methodology’s principles, organizations can drive innovation and agility and efficiently improve product outcomes, regardless of their industry.

To dive deeper into organizational change using Lean-Agile principles, read our white paper, Using Lean-Agile Principles to Execute Organizational Transformation.