It was the year 2001 when all the Agile Practice values and principles were properly formalized in the Agile manifesto. This marked the beginning of a new era where agile approach became a standard method used in software development projects. Now, most IT firms don’t look for any other option when it comes to software development as they know agile is their best option. Even a study shows that about a third of the software development projects rely on an agile framework.
agile project management with scrum – Scrum is an Agile project management methodology involving a small team led by a Scrum master, whose main job is to remove all obstacles to getting work done.
Though the agile approach was created to help IT firms complete software development projects with ease and get better results, the agile approach has moved beyond the boundaries of IT firms.
You can take the example of NPR that reduced the overall programming cost by almost 66% just by using an agile approach. Like NPR, many non-tech firms have started adopting agile methods like Kanban, but you must understand the process of introducing agile practices in a non-tech team or firm.
In this blog post, we will talk about the agile process and its implementation in non-tech teams and firms.
Table of Contents
What is agile?
Before understanding how non-tech teams and firms can use agile practices, we should get familiar with the term agile and the basic concepts behind it.
The agile manifesto is the result of a team of developers looking forward to writing better software. Gradually, this agile movement taken by a team of developers becomes a project management approach. Here are the core values of an agile framework-
- Preferring interaction and individuals over tools and processes
- The Preferring software solutions over documentation
- Preferring customer collaboration over the negotiation of contracts
- Preferring adaption to change instead of just sticking to a plan
The agile practices
Here are some of the key practices of an agile approach
- Making a list for prioritizing work
- Showing public boards so the entire team and the stakeholders can track the progress
- Organizing retrospective meetings
- Planning out work to be done in sprints of 2 to 3 weeks
- Organizing standup meetings of 5-10 minutes
Using agile framework with your non-tech team and firm
You will be surprised to know that even a badly implemented agile method in your non-tech team or firm can work, and even a little bit of agile can help you, your team, and your firm. But this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the implementation of agile approach seriously, as we have mentioned it only to make you familiar with the power of agile methods.
Before using the agile approach in your firm, the teams should ask themselves why they want to use agile in the first place. What are the issues and obstacles of your non-tech team and firm that the agile approach can solve?
Issues with duplicating other’s work
There might be a problem in your team that is not allowing the team members to duplicate each other’s efforts and work. In such a situation, you can organize a daily standup meeting of 5-10 minutes, and in these meetings, everyone should share what they did yesterday, what they are going to do today and the obstacles in their work.
Issues of trustworthiness and empowerment
The team members can also feel low in terms of empowerment and trustworthiness. Which might stop them from staying aligned with the firm’s goal. For this, you can build backlogs of works that should be complete in a sprint, and these sprints should last for around two weeks. This will allow teams to come up with their own plans for the completion of the work.
Issues of not meeting the customer’s requirement
There are many cases where a firm fails just because it cannot come up with a product that offers any benefit to the customer, fulfill the customer’s requirement, or solve any customer’s problem.
To get rid of such issues, you simply have to deliver the smallest yet the most valuable thing to a small group of customers. And then by getting feedback, you can improve what you are offering.
The agile approach might have originated from the IT industry. But this doesn’t mean all the benefits of agile methods should only stay confined to it. Even while being a non-tech team member or a non-tech firm. You can capitalize on the advantages of agile approach as there have been many cases. Where a non-tech team has benefited from agile methods.
But you have to ensure that you are using the best workflow management process that includes the properties of agile manifesto like the Kanban agile.
