How to successfully introduce agile thinking in an organisation

The transition to agile thinking in an organisation is often a bottom-up process, with development teams buying into the concepts of value-based delivery early on and attempting to share the benefits with the wider business (sometimes with difficulty). For stakeholders, project management officers and reporting lines, tracking a project and asking “when” it will all be delivered instead of focusing on the problems that need resolving (the “why”) is a frequent issue. While the “when” is still important, focusing on this in isolation limits options for the business and often increases the size of deliverables or delays value-adding opportunities. 

From “when” to “what” and “why”: dissecting the agile approach

In agile communities, you’ll hear and read plenty about pushing the focus to the issue and getting a better understanding of “why” a change is useful, which is a valid approach. From the stakeholder’s world view, though, it is a big leap away from their current measure of success. Therefore, an easier step in mindset to make from the “when” is to the “what” before then going to the “why”. 

When you have a stakeholder with many features they want to deliver, their focus will usually be on “When can I get it?”. Instead of jumping straight to “Why does this change matter to you?”, which may receive a defensive response (for many different, and valid, reasons), asking “What aspect is important?” or “What do you want next?” followed by “Because perhaps we can give you this bit sooner?” can show the value of an iterative approach. Once this cadence of talking about the “what next” becomes the norm, alongside the confidence established by consistently delivering tangible value, the discussion about “Why this is important” becomes a much smaller and easier step. The “why” aspect gives more context, and in turn, more options on how to proceed. Things could be delivered sooner, there could be a dependency or lead times that need tracking. 

Considerations for high-level stakeholders & project management to adopt an agile mindset

High-level stakeholders that use dates to track a department as part of their KPIs can obfuscate helping different levels or types of stakeholders when it comes to transitioning to an agile mindset. Although it can follow the same principles, understanding what value they want followed by why they want it and whether the problem can be resolved instead of giving something of low value that has a higher risk of losing stakeholder trust is critical. There are several KPIs that can be tracked to gain confidence in the team’s performance, and the end goal should be a backlog of problems, with the top section being small enough to resolve iteratively. This can also be displayed left to right over a timeline, with higher confidence in the ability to deliver to forecasted timelines for those on the left. 

How CACI can help

When it comes to agility, seeing is believing. If you increase your release frequency and deliver smaller chunks of tangible value more often, conversations will start to shift from “when” to “what next”, which is a much smaller mindset step towards the goal of “why”. Of course, this is not a one-size-fits-all approach, but more coaching what’s available in your coaching toolkit. 

Practical steps for transition 

1. Clarify the transition process: Development teams should share agile benefits with the wider business through workshops and regular updates. 
2. Address common challenges: Identify and discuss common challenges such as resistance to change and offer practical solutions like training sessions and pilot projects. 
3. Include case studies: Share real-life case studies or success stories to make the transition more relatable and convincing. 
4. Visual aids: Use diagrams or flowcharts to visually represent the shift from “when” to “what” and “why”. 
5. Engage the reader: Pose questions or scenarios to engage the reader and encourage them to reflect on their own organisation’s practices. 

If you have any scenarios within your own organisation that you’d like to discuss with one of our experts or to find out how something like this can be applied, please get in touch with us.