Structured and flexible

The term “agile” has become very popular in business management in recent years. It expresses a desire for speed and flexibility in response to a constantly changing business environment.

The origin of the term lies in the field of project management, in a manifesto signed by a group of software developers in 2001 at The Lodge at Snowbird resort in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah. The group wanted to develop a more flexible approach to projects than a traditional one, which is based on lots of documentation and process-heavy principles.

Today, agile project management is a mainstay of software developers. But the principles and practices of its innovative approaches to collaboration and communication have a much wider relevance.

In this article, we look more closely at the key principles of the agile approach — all of which can be applied in any professional context.

1. Why agile?

Agile project management is a response to dramatic changes in the business world. Organizations have become more complex, as have the challenges facing them. Traditional methods of planning and management struggle to deal with increased volatility in the business environment.

Agile project management is an iterative process that fosters open and explicit communication among team members. It involves setting crystal clear objectives, delivering smaller pieces of work more frequently and establishing a robust feedback process to create continuous learning.

In the agile approach, individuals and interactions have priority over processes and tools. This reflects the belief that collaboration and communication are the keys to project (and business) success. Attention is therefore paid to enabling individuals to interact and exchange views in a highly productive way — typically with an emphasis on face-to-face interaction rather than written documentation. A key aspect of agile projects is regular, short stand-up meetings (or “stand ups”), often held every day — usually in circles around a whiteboard — in order to promote collaboration.

The agile approach also emphasizes the simple visualization of progress and plans, to make communication more explicit and more likely to achieve collective understanding and collective buy-in. Intensive use is made of visual tools such as whiteboards, “team walls”, kanban boards and flip charts to share information, take decisions and track project progress.

The agile approach is based on the need to take regular and frequent decisions on what to do next. Instead of having longer project phases, the aim is to manage complexity and avoid delays through bite-sized decision-making and (typically) two-week working cycles known as “sprints”. The emphasis in this process is on getting small packages of work done and maintaining momentum.

2. Learning to learn

A learning-based approach is at the heart of agile project management. Progress is reviewed regularly and decisions adjusted for the next sprint in response to the current dynamic reality. Regular feedback sessions are held both among team members and external stakeholders.

The agile approach aims to create a safe and open culture of communication, where people feel free to exchange diffe- rent points of views and express reservations. Also, communication channels and team protocols are discussed and agreed according to the demands of the situation and the preferences of the team members and customers. As a team develops trust through its work, communication methods can then be adapted.

Another key aspect of the agile approach is the explicit focus on the end customer, something that often gets lost within large organizations and in traditional project management. Regular client meetings and feedback on progress aim to avoid problems such as the failure to deliver on expectations and “scope creep”, whereby the areas covered by the project become ever greater.

3. Agile communication

Although it is associated with flexibility, the agile method involves a disciplined, structured approach to communication. Here are five key aspects that you can integrate into your team meetings.

a) Defining a collaborative process

One of the central ideas of agile project management is the need to focus more consciously on communication and collaboration, and to create an environment in which both can flourish. This requires a great deal of communication about communication, discussing the rules of engagement, both within the team and with external stakeholders. It also involves getting collective buy-in for a set of team norms and methods.

b) Communicating clearly

Engagement and clear communication are at the heart of the agile method, with its focus on regular, highly participative meetings and its use of visualization tools to make project status and decisions visible to team members and external stakeholders. Daily stand-ups aim to produce a physical togetherness and commitment. Short, focused opinions are very important. Long, complex contributions, on the other hand, can make listening and collaboration very difficult. Positive, interactive listening is also essential. Agile communicators need to paraphrase regularly what others say and add positively to their contributions.

c) Taking the right decisions

Agile project management was set up partly to counter the inefficiency of fearful and often highly political communication in traditional project teams. In such teams, opinions are often not expressed and decision-making is compromised. The agile approach puts the focus on clear goal-setting and a strong collaborative dynamic to get joint agreement. Agile communicators also encourage dissenting views and challenges to their potential decisions, and are curious when new ideas are put forward. Visualization is central, and is used both to express ideas and to capture joint decisions.

d) Reviewing progress

Agile communicators are results-oriented. They take decisions, act quickly and then take time to discuss what has been achieved. Tools such as a kanban board are used to visualize what has been achieved, what hasn’t yet been achieved and what remains to be done. Agile communicators need to give short, clear updates about the teams’ achievements, be open about what hasn’t been done and give recommendations based on their experience so far. Agile communicators also look ahead to the next phase/sprint and clearly communicate the necessary next steps, with a short analysis of potential challenges and solutions.

e) Optimizing through feedback

The single most important aspect of agile project management and agile communication is its learning loop. This means embracing open and constructive feedback, and abandoning the blame culture that infects many organizations. Agile communicators need to be able to celebrate what has gone well, in order to build motivation and engagement. Agile communication also means correcting mistakes, and being open when things have not gone so well. A time of failure is never a moment to blame others, but an opportunity to use the experience constructively to learn for the future and get it right the next time.

4. Is agile the only way?

Humans and projects are so complex that single solutions to communication questions are unrealistic. However, the agile approach is a very powerful set of principles, practices and behaviours.

Many people will resist this approach — particularly those who prefer traditional hierarchical forms of organizing work and analytical methods of risk analysis, planning and decision-making. Yet the agile approach has much to recommend it. Even the simple concept of shared visualization can be very powerful for multinational teams, in which discussions in English often become hijacked by those who are more competent in the language, particularly native speakers.

Agile is only one model among many. And as the British statistician George Box rightly said: “All models are false. But some are useful.”