Agile in Digital Transformation
By: Jensen Loke
Tags: Product Management, Digital Transformation, Startup, Agile, Team

The many paths you can take in agile. Where are you headed?

What is “Agile”? Really? At any workplace that is trying to transform digitally, you might hear a lot about this new buzzword without actually knowing what it means to you or your team.

a live repost of a complaint by a close friend

Throw in more new terms like agile project management, agile product development, agile strategy and it only gets worse. Shortly after, your company starts sending people off for scrum training.

As the day passes, it starts to feel more like an excuse to keep changing a strategy or direction. You would often hear: “We need to pivot, try this or that.” With no real results or an actual goal set, then you’re wondering why things need to change so fast, if not at all. If it’s not broken, why fix it? And the rate of change is putting a considerable amount of toll on your workload. The management team is starting to sound indecisive.

Sounds familiar? You are not alone.

Getting it Right: The Culture and The People

Everyone understanding the role they play in a soccer team

What my previous workplaces really got right about agile is that before you setup any kind of goal or target, agile is first really about the culture of the group, holding together individuals with inherent values.

As the saying goes— “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. But what makes a good culture? In such a team, as a team member, you’ll feel you are in a safe space, trusted by others and empowered to make decisions. However complex the external environment is, you should be able to trust your team leads, your team mates, and communicate on a regular basis with openness, collaborating and sharing best practices.

As for values, individuals should possess a strong sense of empowerment and ownership over their work. Everyone must understand and own their piece of the customer experience, be it internal or external. Then team leads can work with the team to drive that experience to perfection.

Driving it Home

A winding road, that leads to the target destination. The path is not linear! Do you know that goal well?

Having these two key components, imagine now that we’ve build a good vehicle. The next part is to pave the road towards a good destination. Building strategy towards a lasting vision that doesn’t change over time is not an easy task. The reason why mission statements are simple, one liner sentences is because by principle it should not change, while simultaneously being easy to understand. Leaders need to connect decision drivers to changing strategy, and how that leads to accomplish the vision. This is akin to steering the vehicle in the route it takes to get to the endpoint.

When I explain Agile I always use what I learnt during my time at Amazon to explain it. Try to contextualize this quote by Jeff Bezos —

“I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?’ And that is a very interesting question; it’s a very common one. I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two — because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. … In our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that’s going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection. It’s impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, ‘Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher,’ or ‘I love Amazon; I just wish you’d deliver a little more slowly.’ Impossible. And so the effort we put into those things, spinning those things up, we know the energy we put into it today will still be paying off dividends for our customers 10 years from now. When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it.”

“Pave your strategy, which helps you determine which projects to do and which to drop, around customer values and principles that don’t change.”

Pave strategy, like which projects to do, which to drop, around customer values and principles that don’t change. Now what’s your team’s strategy?

Change Starts With You

I hope this article has managed to trigger some meaningful thoughts around the topic and shed some light. It starts with you, a passionate individual, eager to make an impact, hungry to learn, not afraid to make mistakes, taking ownership, and asking why, in the most respectful manner. Influence your team mates and your leaders to inspire change. Changes in organizations are built brick by brick, and day by day. In my next piece, I’ll talk more about navigating legacy organizations in digital transformation.