Agile mindset, Agile software development mindset, Agile mindset definition, Agile culture and mindset, Agile culture shift
A common and natural way of working involves specialists with experience in a set of skills that do not question the current ways of working because they seem the natural way of working. Also having detailed plans for upcoming work and far in the future seems natural, as it provides a guidance and seems to protect against rework on the long term.
Agile Mindset definition
The agile mindset transitions from specialists who really know one area to generalists who know a little bit of everything. Agile focuses on short term planning by embracing uncertainty instead of trying to eliminate future rework. Agile is a mindset because it is not focusing directly on different ways of working, but more on thinking in another way about work. Only applying agile development practices and roles in an organization is not enough for the Agile transformation journey to be successful, the agile practices and frameworks should come after the organization truly embraces the mindset change.
Agile software development mindset
Agile is a response to the typical product delivery mindset. As technical roles became more and more specialized in the software industry, key technical decisions fell in the hands of less people and the collective knowledge of the team of experts became greater than the technical knowledge of the ones managing the teams and the projects. Instead of managing with a top-down approach, management switches to a servant-leadership mindset, were they trust and empower the team to make the best collective technical decisions.
Agile mindset change and culture shift
Agile is a mindset and a culture shift, it is not a framework, a process, nor a methodology and it is a mixture of building and learning on the way because a cascading sequencing way of working is not suitable for complex products and market changes during the building process. Agile is defined by the four values and described by the twelve principles of the Agile Manifesto and then applied through an unlimited number of practices and different ways of working.
Business agility is the ability of an organization to sense changes internally or externally and respond accordingly in order to deliver value to its customers. Business agility values individuals and their interactions, collaboration, driving toward outcome and constant learning, similar to agile software development. The principles that serve the foundation of business agility include iterate to learn and reflect on feedback and adapt both product and process.
Agile Transformation
Agile transformation is as an act of transforming an organization’s form or nature gradually to one that is able to embrace and thrive in a flexible, collaborative, self-organizing and fast changing environment. The Agile Manifesto values and principles can be taught and exercised throughout any type of organization as it does not just apply to development teams. The entire organization needs to understand the definition of an agile transformation and the value of it in order to benefit from the rewards of achieving true, healthy agility. The complete cultural and organizational mind set must change to one that embraces a culture of self-organization and collaboration.
While Agile adoption is “doing” agile in a mechanical way, Agile transformation is “being, becoming or changing character or condition to one of agility”, which is much more difficult to achieve as it involves a mind-set change in all people in an organization which can be uncomfortable for most.