Companies around the world are facing increasingly fast change in customer needs and market conditions. A key driver is the rapid technological development of the past years. To meet the challenges of the digital world and to remain future-oriented, companies need to develop more “agility”.
We explain what agile companies are and how you can successfully manage to become an agile business.
In order to create more agile processes within the company, agile project management methods are needed.
Some approaches or methods have successfully been established as agreed standards and are widely used by agile companies.
Let us introduce you to some of the most popular agile methods:
Scrum is one of the best known methods of agile project management. Scrum is mainly used in software development. Scrum processes and roles support the requirements of the ever-evolving application management.
Kanban is an agile method for production control using the pull principle. The procedure is based exclusively on the actual consumption of materials. For the visualization of the project a Kanban board is used.
Design Thinking is a creative process, which is all about finding ideas based on design methods. In Design Thinking innovations are developed that are based on the users’ needs with the goal of fully satisfying them.
The Lean Startup method is about bringing a business idea, a product or a service to the market as quickly as possible. In doing so, long planning and development phases can be skipped.
Agility is not only a project management approach, but has also become a management principle, which also has a high impact on organizational structures. Working in agile companies therefore means more than just flexibility.
In an agile company management and communication concepts are challenged and often redesigned. When even established processes are replaced by agile methods, the foundations of the existing collaboration are challenged in favor of agility, change competence and market viability.
The focus of an agile company is particularly on the customer and the employee. An example is that customers are involved in the product development from the very beginning, in order to obtain valuable and continuous feedback.
There are different methods and processes used in agile companies. Popular agile methods are Scrum, Kanban, Design Thinking and Lean Startup, among many more. The success of these agile methods is often due to increasing employees’ motivation, as a guiding principle of agile companies is a focus on self-organized teamwork, implying that employees are controlled less.
Agility should therefore not only be seen as a trend, which can be quickly implemented in the company. A serious consideration of the organizational structure is essential, in order to make the company more sustainable for the future.