Beware of agility rigidity
Are projects inside your business suffering from agility rigidity?
Doing and being agile in organisations can feel overwhelming. Scrum, kanban, stand ups, burn down charts, Fibonacci story points, user stories, epics, Jira, Asana, Trello, Active Collab, Monday.com, Basecamp, Retrospectives, Sprint Planning and and and …
Businesses can sometimes forget their “brand soul essence” – why they are doing what they are doing, why the work matters and who the work is getting done for. Projects can get lost in a world of confusing ways of working, long processes and missing human2human interaction.
Often a lot of hard work is going on – sprint planning is happening and/or gantt charts are getting produced, timesheets are getting actioned and task tools are getting used. Yet, when the CEO wants to know where to see a simple snapshot view of all projects and where these are at, alongside a profitability view, this info is buried beneath complicated ways of working.
Businesses can easily fall into the agility rigidity trap. They try to follow an agile project framework beginning to end but some of the suggested practices and ways of working might not be suitable for the industry the business is in or the type of projects the business is rolling out or the team dynamics within the organisation. Or you could find a business tasks an individual with setting up an agile tool. So they research a bunch of them, pick one with pre-set agile templates and this then gets added to and added to and added to. Before they know it they have created a very long granular process with loads and loads of tasks being set up. Most of the tasks are not even needed from a reporting perspective but can live as “checklists”, creating more breathing room for “creativity” and less “admin” that most people loathe. Agility rigidity can end up hampering what business agility is all about: being able to deliver customer value quickly and easily.
So just how can you go about avoiding “agility rigidity” in your projects?
Here goes:
- The project WHY & WHO – remember the project’s “reason for being”. What value does it add and to who? Always go back to the “why” – the project goals – look at the “why”, and “who it’s for” every day.
- The project EXPERIENCE – who are you presenting project progress to? What experience do you want them to have? What is their experience in deliverables along the way? Is it simple and collaborative?
- The project WAYS OF WORKING – do you have a solid “base” agile “ways of working” framework to follow that works? Is it streamlined, is everybody on board with it? Are you working from the same programs? Are you getting what you need from the programs you are using? Are you easily able to track project milestones and profitability? Are you embracing agile principles like speed delivery, collaboration, effective communication and operational excellence?
- The project TALENT – do you have the right team working on your projects, with the right skills and do they ooze your company values in the way they work? Are they clear on their role and others in the team and are they collaborating effectively?
Do your projects need some “agile ways of working” magic?
Are your projects suffering a little from:
- Internal process confusion
- long production cycles
- people and roles confusion
Operational Excellence are two words that will allow for more freedom around agility in your business. There are many things that need to come together to make these two words be true in your business. People, Processes, Systems, Culture. It requires a collective effort to produce your operational excellence framework for success.
With a base operational excellence framework in place, this can free you up to be more creative inside of our own business and inside of our client’s businesses.
Operational Excellence Success Framework Program
I have partnered with Bill Murray to produce a program for you: Operational Excellence Success Framework. We work in tandem with your business and offer a series of collaborative sessions and coaching around Process mapping, Ways of working, Structured Job Specs, Roles & Responsibilities and KPI’s that enables your business to have clarity and alignment on your goals along with measurable deliverables.
Pop me an email (alicejakins@gmail.com) to find out more …