Agile alone can’t deliver agility

22nd January 2024

by Richard Higginbotham

Is Agile failing to put the oomph into agility for your organisation? If so, there’s a reason why. But it’s possible to fire up your innovation once again.

It’s now more than two decades since a group of software engineers planted their stake in the ground and set out a vision for better development. Wheatus’s iconic Teenage Dirtbag was riding high in the UK music charts around that time — and optimism was in the air.

The Agile methodology won over a new generation of developers who valued its principles. It included a focus on individuals and interactions over processes and tools, and responding to change rather than following a plan.

Agile delivered on its potential, time and again. Organisations have become more adaptable, customer-centric and collaborative. They’ve reduced risk and accelerated time to market. Success has been seen in field and site operations, transport and facilities management, retail, manufacturing, finance and a host of other business sectors.

Yet organisations are still a long way from achieving the digital change and innovation they need.  The typical desk-based worker still spends 1 in 3 hours doing things manually that would be better done by software. UK employees spend 1 day every week resolving unnecessary issues. The types of issues that happen when there are gaps between IT systems, manual errors and process delays.

Development deadlock

The problem isn’t Agile itself. The principles still hold true. But the growing demand for development resources has outstripped supply. Just recently, the UK had 55,000 unfilled technology vacancies and the talent crunch is expected to last until 2026.

Without people, Agile falls flat.

For many organisations, game-changing innovation remains tantalisingly out of reach. They’re still facing issues with legacy tech and monolith applications that offer poor integration and are difficult to change.

And as they try to deliver improvements, people are doing the job of technology. They’re bridging gaps between systems with manual workarounds, piecemeal apps, spreadsheets (and other uncomfortable sticking plasters).

Rather than delivering true innovation, they’ve created a Frankenstein version of shadow IT. And the picture only gets worse. As more apps are added, systems sprawl and teams-based approval processes extend across email, resulting in a mountain of data spaghetti, duplication and errors.

It’s a world away from the Agile founders’ mountain top moment back in 2001.

But there’s still an opportunity to retool, recalibrate and get Agile motoring once again.

Agile’s bounce-back

The principles of Agile are a great fit with low-code development, where ‘fusion teams’ – as hailed by Gartner – comprising colleagues from across business units can build applications at speed.

Working with leading low-code tools under the oversight of IT, these enthusiastic business technologists are empowered to fix tech challenges they encounter every day.

They can streamline workflows, deploy robotic process automation, make use of AI and enrich customer engagement – without knowing how to create a line of code themselves. In essence, they become product owner and developers, wrapped into one.

Crucially, these small multidisciplinary teams are living out Agile’s key principles of collaboration, close working with customers and responding to new challenges rapidly. With low-code they can deliver swifter development with shorter cycles and more iteration.

Today, Agile is still a floor-filler. And with low-code, the music’s faster and everyone’s invited.