Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices
5 Min. Read
The renowned management consultant and writer, Peter Drucker, famously said that culture eats strategy for breakfast. Most people interpret this to mean that you can have the best strategy in the world, but unless people take tangible actions to execute on that strategy it is meaningless. We have shamelessly borrowed this sentiment to contrast two critical elements needed to create an agile culture, :
- A culture where the organisation is able to anticipate, pivot and respond quickly to changing market conditions.
- A culture that prioritises continuous improvement through regular reviews and constructive feedback.
In our research on Agile Culture we have differentiated between implementing agile processes (do-ing agile), and having an agile mindset (be-ing agile). Our argument is that to have an agile culture you need to move beyond simply doing agile, by implementing and following a set of specific methodologies, daily routines and practices. Instead, our view is that being agile is key, unlocking the key mindsets and behaviours that will allows agility to thrive in your organisation.
What are the principles of agile culture?
Agile working has exploded in popularity in recent years, with some experts growing concerns that the core principles of agility have become watered down with time. However, if you’re looking to build agility within your culture, you can’t go wrong by paying attention to the following core principles of agile working.
People over Process
Agile working encourages leaders to prioritise people over processes. Although we understand that robust processes are key to ensuring an organisation runs smoothly, agile encourages flexibility within these processes where necessary.
For instance, leaders should feel they have the freedom to query or make tweaks to existing processes, to improve the efficiency and working conditions of the team. Processes can be valuable, but the purpose if for them to support the team — not the other way around.
Leadership over Management
Although management and leadership are often two sides of the same coin, there has been a shift in recent years. Some consultants believe that the word ‘management’ comes with a stigma, as it relates to leading a team. Projects should be managed, but people, ideally, should be led.
A mindset shift from people manager to leader can be transformative at the individual, and organizational level. Modern leadership principles encourage support, constructive feedback, and practicing empathy when interacting with people at all levels. Leadership, rather than people management, tends to be more compatible with the agile ethos.
Collaboration over Cascading
A cascading strategy typically refers to the division of an organization’s overall plan of action into separate parts, which are then delegated to the most suitable department. While there are advantages to a cascading strategy, it can lead to organizations losing focus on their shared goals, and departments beginning to work in silos.
Prioritizing a collaborative, rather than cascading approach, means that leaders should promote and facilitate discussion and cooperation between different departments, to improve operations as a whole. It’s vital, in any organization, that the right hand knows what the left is doing, and agile working looks to encourage this as much as possible.
Adaptive over Prescriptive
In teaching, adaptive teaching is a practice which addresses the limits and pitfalls of prescriptive teaching. Prescriptive teaching assumes that students all possess the same core abilities, and therefore will require the same level of support from their teacher. Adaptive teaching takes into account other vital factors, such as different learning styles, personalities, and the unique strengths and weaknesses that every student has.
Adaptive over prescriptive principles in the workplace means that leaders should treat their employees as individuals, rather than a monolith. Different team members bring different things to the table, and an adaptive approach is needed to ensure you are allowing each team member to work to their strengths, whilst supporting them in areas where they have less confidence.
Adapting tasks and approaches to support individual needs of team members, and make the most of their unique skillset, is core to agile methodology.
Dynamics Over Documents
Probably thanks to agile’s roots in the software development community, ‘dynamic’, or digital documents are prioritized over written ones. These easy-to-share, collaborative, and editable files allow team members to work efficiently, and in the manner that agile working promotes
Agile is a forward-thinking, tech-driven methodology. Leaders who forget this, do so at their peril. Over the last decade, we’ve seen the way that IT, AI, and other advancements have revolutionized every industry and workplace. Agile working encourages team members at every level to seek out innovative ways to improve the workplace, and its culture.
What are the patterns of an agile culture?
In our view, there are 4 critical patterns of behaviour that have to work together to create a truly agile culture. These are:
- Customer centricity – where the customer sits at the heart of what people think and do
- Empowerment – where people believe that they are responsible for delivering to others and leaders trust their employees will deliver on promises
- Collaboration – where diverse individuals connect together to solve complex problems and share knowledge and resources end to end.
These patterns of behaviour, within an organisation or other working environment, are a great indicator that agile principles are being correctly applied. Leaders who model agile behaviours, and encourage them within their own teams, are more likely to see the benefits that agile working has to offer. You can listen to Walking The Talk founder Carolyn's podcast episode on agility for more information.
Agile Culture in practice
Let us give you a simple example of this in practice. One team we worked with had put in a process to systematically gather and share data around the customer. However, as they did further work on ‘being’ agile they realised that whilst they had data, they had limited engagement with the customer. They didn’t have the customer voice driving their decisions, and they weren’t altering product design based on customer feedback. To ‘be agile’ they needed to completely rethink their relationship with the customer in the design process.
In a review of our Walking with Agility program, we were struck by their response to the question ‘what is your advice to anyone wanting to create an agile culture?’
“The mindset is the hardest. You are changing people, how they think, how they behave. It is very difficult to do. In contrast, attending a stand-up meeting is easy! It is essential to do something around mindsets to embed agile. When we see people doing and being agile it makes a massive difference. My recommendation to anyone is go through Walking with Agility first — win hearts and minds before tackling the mechanics of agile. You will get more motivation, engagement, and impact.”
Our culture transformation services are designed to help you plan your target culture, as well as build and maintain it. Get in touch with us to learn how to build an agile culture in your organisation.
