How to Introduce Agile Principles to Your Existing Processes

March 10, 2020 Paul Crosby

The idea of launching an agile workflow might seem appealing if you are forming a new team or ad hoc committee, but what if you already have a department that is used to executing work a certain way? Adding new frameworks can detract from the current work and place stress on your team, potentially slowing down projects.
You don’t have to completely change your workflow to embrace agile. You can add agile elements to your in-process workflow to improve your work. Here’s what you need to know about making your team more agile as it works within an existing system.

You Don’t Need to Fully Switch to an Agile Framework

Your current framework does not need to come to a grinding halt in order to jump on the agile train. Instead, as the team at Airtable explains, bringing in aspects of agility can help your team improve.

Through agile, every new feature or task is tied back to a function. The focus is on problem-solving through new features, rather than developing features that no one really needs or asked for. Regardless of how the work gets done, this shift in mentality helps your team become more effective.

“There are more and more people that believe that Agile is not the holy grail of project management,” writes Erik van Hurck, PPM consultant at Projectum ApS. “There are so many factors that come into play among others: politics, resource availability, budget, client’s needs, communication difficulties.”

Essentially, it’s not always possible to launch an agile framework within a team or specific project, but it is possible to apply certain agile elements as they are needed.

Most Companies Use a Hybrid Project Management Model

Not only is it possible to add agile elements to your existing structure, but it’s also increasingly common. Karoline Holicky, marketing director at Meisterplan, reports that 79 percent of companies use some sort of hybrid model, meaning the vast majority of companies that apply agile principles don’t completely switch over to a full agile framework.

Most put that power in the hands of their team members to see what works and what kinds of methodologies they want to embrace. However, Holicky says that this freedom to choose your framework can be great on the team level but miserable from a leadership standpoint. If you’re not careful, you could have multiple teams executing projects in different ways, making them nearly impossible to lead equally.

The concept of bringing two or more methodologies together (most often by adding agile to existing, in-process workflows) has become so common that some teams are creating their own names for it. Liz Kelin, a senior product manager at Capital One, writes about how one company developed the concept of “Aquagilé,” which leveraged agile planning with waterfall production. The research and planning process took on a more agile experience, while the team was able to maintain its traditional waterfall execution process.

The fact is that every team and company needs its own unique tools and processes to operate effectively. Heather Champoux, PMP, says that anyone who tries to see a “one size fits all” tool for every team likely sells a tool that is just okay across the board but doesn’t perform outstanding work for any specific team.

With a hybrid option, teams can learn what works well for them and develop an effective model based on their goals — not based on the project management framework that was sold to them as the only option to solve their problems.

Consider Adding Sprints to Make Your Projects Faster

One of the most popular elements of agile that teams can add to their existing waterfall method is a sprint. This is a week-long or two-week cycle where teams work to accomplish a specific task before the project is reviewed and adjusted to meet the needs of the client.

“Organizing our development work into regular two-week ‘sprint cycles’ allows for substantial, dedicated time for proper testing procedures and internal code reviews,” writes Jenna Hosier, project manager at Radish Lab. “This, almost more than all of the other changes we have considered, will help to ensure that attention to quality is ‘built-in’ and accounted for during the development process.”

More companies have needed to create their own sprints and quick cycles in order to keep up with demand. What begins as a change out of necessity evolves into a new hybrid process for teams.

“We have moved from what was usually a marketing plan that is defined once a year, at the beginning of the year with big campaigns, to planning for campaigns that are much more granular,” Léo Costes, chief operating officer at AXA, tells The Drum.

Costes explains that his team doesn’t have the luxury of planning for something over the course of a year anymore. If a client wants a product, they need it within a few months. His team needs to be able to respond and develop something of value quickly.

Look for Existing Agile Practices in Your Organization

The use of sprints is a good way to show how easily agile ideas can apply to a waterfall production process. In fact, you may already use this strategy, or others, that reflect common agile principles.

Ed Burgoyne, founder of Makr Consulting, says some companies use agile processes without realizing it. He uses examples of teams working together to put together a pitch for a client. Each works on their own part of the pitch and then assembles it into one deliverable. This is typically done over a short period of time where all hands are on deck to get the work done. This is certainly an informal agile sprint, but the bones are there.

Along a similar line, Paul Kesler, PMP, sees speed as one of the main benefits of teams embracing more agile ideas. Lengthy projects are more prone to failure because they take several months or years to execute. By the time the team is reviewing the project’s success, it’s too late to turn around. However, with shorter, less risky sprints, teams can adapt and adjust their strategies to keep the project on track.

“Unlike some of the older project management styles/methodologies, which are much more rigid in their approach, agile style is the most suited for what happens in real life - things change and a team’s work should be adaptable to these changes on the go during their sprint,” writes Lea Serfaty at Monday.com. “Allowing for changes will make a final result better and more in line with the context of the project.”

Companies frequently look for ways to adjust their processes and come to their own conclusions about agility before they even consider changing their workflows to use the agile framework.

Make Sure Your Company Culture Aligns With Agile Principles

One of the top indicators of whether or not your investment in agile workflows within your existing processes will work is the state of your company culture. Your core values and employee behavior will set the tone for how willing people are to try new ideas.

If teams want to tap into the flexibility of agile principles, employees and managers need to be flexible, explains Paul Dandurand, CEO of PieMatrix. Teams need to be able to work on chunks of a project that might not be fully fleshed out, and adapt to client changes. This allows teams to provide better customer experiences and gives them the ability to start work without waiting for a full, concrete project.

“As in a science experiment, the result does not always prove your hypothesis is true,” writes IT management consultant and leadership coach Bob Kantor. “A successful experiment or sprint gives you a better understanding of what is true and what is not so that your next hypothesis and experiment/sprint will deliver a better result and get you closer to your truth.”

Even within the process of taking leaps of faith and building without knowing exactly what the end product will be, teams still need to have a high-level view of what is happening. Even in the most agile environments, a few traditional, waterfall principles will trickle in.

“The iterative nature of Agile development may lead to a frequent refactoring if the full scope of the system is not considered in the initial architecture and design,” Mary Lotz, PMP, director of engineering at Segue Technologies, writes. “Without this refactoring, the system can suffer from a reduction in overall quality.”

That said, a company is less likely to embrace experimentation or challenge their views of a project if that organization’s culture is rigid.

Eileen O'Loughlin, senior content analyst at Capterra, explains that agile concepts need to align with the company’s philosophy and core values. Your team members need to forget their fear of failure and know that you support their decisions during a sprint. If your team is highly risk-averse or management is overwhelmingly involved in every step, then it might not be easy to introduce agile ideas.

The idea of embracing agile concepts and adding them to an existing framework may be intimidating for some teams. However, by maintaining a culture of flexibility and testing certain elements of agile for the viability, your company can become incrementally more agile in a way that benefits your existing waterfall workflow.