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5 Biggest Challenges Facing Agile [#Agile #AgileChallenges #AgileViews]

1. Agreeing On The Meaning Of Agile
2. Getting Top Management Buy-In
3. Combating Agile As A Buzzword
4. Fleshing Out The Details Of Agile
5. Professionalizing Agile

1. Agreeing On The Meaning Of Agile
Agile is not just about doing more work or just doing work more efficiently. Agile is about getting more value from less work. An obsession with delivering more value for customers is central.

The Agile Mindset and the Three Laws of Agile, The Heart of Agile, The Agile Manifesto, and the vast number of books on the subject are all efforts to clarify the concept.

The World Agility Forum taking place in Lisbon, Portugal late September 2019 will bring together many of the Agile players who are intent on accelerating convergence on a common understanding.

2. Getting Top Management Buy-In
There is still a shortage of C-suite leaders who have an equivalent grasp of Agile or the know-how to proceed with implementing Agile.

Change agents need to be able to succinctly and powerfully state the case for Agile and be able to share convincing stories that resonate and inspire the C-suite to get with the program.

3. Combating Agile As A Buzzword

Early stage Agile:
A transformation journey for a large organization can take years. Microsoft has been at it for then 10 years. During the transition period, a firm is clearly not yet fully Agile, but it has pockets of Agile.

Misapplied Agile:
Management may be doing its best to implement Agile, but through a lack of understanding ends up implementing a caricature of Agile.

Scaling frameworks:
Some of the scaling frameworks are particularly troublesome, with the pursuit of deliberately non-Agile ideas such as an internal focus at the expense of the customer and top-down processes that are antithetical to true Agile.

4. Fleshing Out The Details Of Agile
The major thrust of Agile in the first 15 years since the Agile Manifesto of 2001 was spent in figuring out how to make Agile work at the team level, first with individual teams, then with multiple teams and finally with large numbers of teams.

In the last few years progress has begun to be made on the fuller agenda of making the whole organization Agile. We have begun to see progress in understanding Agile in manufacturing, Agile in retail, Agile in petroleum, Agile in strategy, Agile in human resources, Agile budgeting, Agile auditing, and Agile organizational culture.

This is progress but further work is needed on those subjects, as well as on fleshing out how Agile provides a necessary basis for the subtopics of 21st Century management, such as digitization, big data, ecosystems, platforms, artificial intelligence, or the Internet of Things.

5. Professionalizing Agile
Agile has been a phenomenon led by implementers. The Agile Mindset is an attribute of practitioners more than theorists. It is action-oriented more than a theoretical philosophy. It is a basis for diagnosis and action more than a set of beliefs. It is built on the hard-won knowledge of experience.

Business schools have been conspicuous by their absence from the Agile world, being apparently content in many cases to be teaching the expertise of yesterday.

In future, business schools could and should play an important role in several ways.

Adapted From:
The Five Biggest Challenges Facing Agile
Forbes