{"id":1121,"date":"2020-08-26T07:48:43","date_gmt":"2020-08-26T07:48:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/?p=1121"},"modified":"2020-08-26T07:48:44","modified_gmt":"2020-08-26T07:48:44","slug":"beyond-agile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/2020\/08\/26\/beyond-agile\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond Agile"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Image by PIRO4D from Pixabay\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Some decades after the term \u201cAgile\u201d was introduced in software development, one would expect that \u2013 assuming it was a good idea (which it is) \u2013 the concept should have been fully embedded in industry and we\u2019re busy with other things. Still, and this never fails to surprise me, everyone is talking about \u201cbeyond Agile.\u201d The notion seems to be something along the lines of \u201cwe\u2019re still busy here implementing Agile, but perhaps we can start to think about what we can or should focus on next.\u201d If you haven\u2019t adopted Agile, then, for Pete\u2019s sake, get a move on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Business agility<\/a> and all its enablers, such as agile software development, are critical for long-term business success. Because of this, going beyond Agile is, of course, the only reasonable thing to do, but one can interpret the \u201cbeyond\u201d in a variety of ways. Here, I\u2019ll share five \u201cbeyond Agile\u201d concepts that I\u2019ve been working on during the last years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, the traditional discussion around Agile was concerned with \nsoftware and software development only. Especially for companies selling\n products, including mechanics and electronics, as well as software, the\n main question was how to combine the waterfall process associated with \natoms with the Agile process associated with bits. Taking Agile beyond \nthe realms of software and have it include the other technologies making\n up the product is a critical step in achieving business agility and \nallows for new and different business models<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second concept is concerned with going beyond requirements. Traditional Agile, for all its discussion about customer involvement, sprint planning and retrospectives, is still concerned with building towards a specification. Especially SaaS companies have shifted towards outcomes, meaning that teams focus on improving measurable outcome metrics, such as conversion. This requires a fundamentally different approach to development<\/a> as it\u2019s now the team that has to brainstorm approaches to \u201cmove the needle,\u201d build the alternatives to test, measure their impact and then decide on which versions to keep and which ones to drop.\u00a0advertorial\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third, traditional Agile assumed that development takes place in sprints and that there\u2019s a shippable version of the system at the end of every sprint. However, it doesn\u2019t assume that the release of the system actually follows the sprint process. As many companies focusing on continuous deployment and DevOps have figured out, including the release process in the Agile sprint model is a natural way to increase the frequency of value delivery to customers, on top of offering real, tangible data from the field at a much higher frequency. This is a big topic and if you\u2019re interested, you can read more here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years, software has been joined by other digital technologies, specifically data and AI. These technologies benefit from the same principles as those that underlie Agile in software and this has led to the definition of DataOps and MLOps to reflect this. The fourth aspect is concerned with adopting Agile principles for all digital technologies. Of course, there\u2019s a lot to read, including on my blog<\/a>, but you can also watch this video<\/a> to learn more about my view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fifth and final concept is concerned with business agility. \nTraditional Agile, as I mentioned, is mostly concerned with software \nbut, for sure, is confined to product development. However, the holy \ngrail is business agility, ie the ability of a company to rapidly \nrespond to changes in its environment, the market, customers and \nstrategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Concluding, the simple words \u201cbeyond Agile\u201d can refer to a variety of concepts. I\u2019ve discussed five of the primary ones, including applying agile to entire systems and not just software, shifting focus from specifications to outcomes, adopting continuous deployment (DevOps), adopting Agile for data and AI and, finally, reaching full business agility. Next time someone brings up the idea of going beyond Agile, make sure you know what they\u2019re talking about (or rather, make sure that they know what they\u2019re talking about). It\u2019s easy for things to get lost in translation!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get more insights earlier, sign up for my newsletter at <\/em>jan@janbosch.com<\/em><\/a> or follow me on<\/em> janbosch.com\/blog<\/em><\/a>, LinkedIn (<\/em>linkedin.com\/in\/janbosch<\/em><\/a>) or Twitter (<\/em>@JanBosch<\/em><\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some decades after the term \u201cAgile\u201d was introduced in software development, one would expect that \u2013 assuming it was a good idea (which it is) \u2013 the concept should have been fully embedded in industry and we\u2019re busy with other things. Still, and this never fails to surprise me, everyone is talking about \u201cbeyond Agile.\u201d … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,3,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1121"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1123,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121\/revisions\/1123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}