Five Key Steps to a Successful Enterprise Agile Transformation

‘Going agile’ is no more a new thing. Most organizations start agile transformation in a phased manner, starting from either the project level or the portfolio level and then work towards complete enterprise agility. But very often, enterprises that successfully implement agile at a smaller scale fail to replicate the success at an enterprise level. The possible root cause, in most cases, is a lack of synergy across the disparate systems and cross-functional teams. In this blog, let us discuss the 5 key steps that help enterprises maintain synergy on board for a successful enterprise agile transformation.

1. Establish agile transformation goals: The goal of the transformation cannot be to ‘go agile’ because others are going agile; there must be an obvious and larger reason that drives the transformation. The goal could be to enable the enterprise to gain financial rewards, reduce field defects by a certain percentage, increase number of releases per quarter, generate risk-free value at scale, or even something completely different. The goal, however, must be understood by all the stakeholders involved in this transformation.
2. Understand the value of collective effort: At its core, agile is about collaboration. Therefore, a successful enterprise agile transformation requires a certain level of seamless-ness between the people, process, and technology of the enterprise. This means, the enterprise will have to first unlearn the fragmented agile approach (the one at project/portfolio level) and learn to tightly integrate the enterprise ecosystem.
3. Integrate the ecosystem: Enterprise agility requires cross-team communication. Imagine in a setup of 1000 or more people, communication to happen manually every day! Wouldn’t it be a total chaos even if there is a set process on how to communicate & tools to facilitate that communication? Therefore, it is crucial that the disparate systems in the enterprise talk to each other. For the systems to talk, they must be integrated using a robust integration solution that guarantees seamless data exchange, transparency, and immediate recovery in case of a failure.
4. Set right expectations with the rollout: Once the stakeholders are on board with the goals and plans, the roll out strategy comes in picture. Top-down directives mostly do not work in this case especially when a large enterprise is undergoing the transformation. That is why, a constructive and continuous communication between cross-functional teams and the senior management is important. Positive reinforcement from the senior management and setting the right expectations with the rollout is important.
5. Measure and adapt frequently: As the goals are set in the beginning, quantifying the results is easy. However, the success of the transformation should also be measured by the increased ease in operations between the cross-functional teams and the value being delivered to the customer. Agile continues to evolve and therefore, the best risk mitigation technique is to take regular feedback from the involved stakeholders at all levels. The ultimate aim is to enable the enterprise to deliver value in context of constant change, evolution, and re-invention.

To learn more about agile transformation from our experts, read the following blogs:

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It is easier to achieve agility in smaller functions by introducing manual agile processes or solutions that work successfully at a smaller scale. But to create a fully scalable agile foundation (processes and systems) that successfully runs across the enterprise, there are multiple challenges that an organization may face…

Author bio:

Vibhuti Bhushan is the VP of Products and Marketing at OpsHub. Over the last 18+ years, Vibhuti Bhushan has worked at SAP, NetApp, EMC and OpsHub in various leadership roles in Engineering and Product Management.