The Most Important Agile Trends to Follow in 2020
I was recently interviewed for Information Week's The Most Important Agile Trends to Follow in 2020 where I spoke with John Edwards about several important trends that I see for 2020:
- Business agility. We're seeing more and more organizations apply agile strategies beyond software development. Agile is being applied to improve organization's approach to finance, marketing, procurement, data management, enterprise architecture, people management, and many other critical aspects of their business.
- Doing agile, not just being agile. Yes, an agile mindset is important but you also need to have the agile skills required to do the work. Organizations are finding that they need to invest in their staff to give them the new agile skills required to "do agile."
- Context counts. Your people, your teams, and your organization are all unique and face unique situations. To be effective you need to know how to choose a way of working (WoW) that reflects the situation that you face - a single "standard" process, or collection of "best practices," won't be the best fit for what you need. Your teams must be enabled to choose and then improve their WoW as their situation evolves over time.
The Project Management Institute's Disciplined Agile (DA) toolkit will prove to be a valuable resource for anyone trying to achieve any one of these trends, let alone more than one. It explicitly addresses business agility by providing explicit advice for the range of process areas within your organization by putting hundreds of strategies and practices into context, enabling you to choose and evolve an effective way of working (WoW) to address your unique situation. Take a few minutes to check out Disciplined Agile (DA).
Agile Transformation | Execution | Strategy | Innovation | Mentor | Collaborator
4yAgile is a mindset. Business agility is the next frontier in that mindset.
Director of Engineering - Fleet Solutions at Platform Science
4yI get what you're saying but I don't think agilists are doing themselves any favor by saying things like "do agile". Agile isn't something to do, but something to be. Those unfamiliar with that will continue to insist that there's something else we're missing until we "do" agile and will get very prescriptive until they feel comfortable they have it "right". As agilists we need to really watch the words we use to message the benefits of agile development.
Software Technology Leader and Writer
4yScott's identification of context as critical for agile in 2020 is right on. Enabling our people and teams to select and adjust their way of working (WoW, as Scott calls it) is the next wave now that the basic ideas of agile are pretty well known.
IT Program/Project Manager | PM Support, Team Building
4yBest to do what works than to do what you are told to do!
Director of Client Success at SMC Squared with expertise in Product Leadership and Global Delivery
4yThanks for the post... what is an agile skill that companies can invest in according to PMI?