The Present and Future State of Agility

The Modern Agilist is a podcast devoted to discussing all things related to agile and large-scale software delivery. We recently took the time to discuss The 15th State of Agile report, the longest continuously running annual Agile survey. There were several key takeaways as we unpacked the information-dense report. We’ve collated the highlights below but if you want the full experience, be sure to listen to the full 1-hour conversation here.

Don’t Call it a Comeback!

The state of agile, you say? More like the future of business and technical agility. Despite what’s frequently said, Agile is alive, well, and thriving. Possibly magnified by an increased shift to remote working, the previous year’s growth can only be described as explosive with an increase among software teams from 37% in 2020 to 86% in 2021.

While most of this adoption is represented by software teams, it’s also true that agile methods are increasingly being adopted by non-software groups. Its to be expected that other organizational areas such as marketing, security, HR, sales, and finance will see increased adoption of agile methods as well. Like a self-replicating ooze that starts in a computer science department but then grows to overtake other, closely located departments, so agile spread will grow deeper in software development and spillover into other creative domains.

The Alpha Opportunity for Practitioners

This represents an incredibly unique opportunity for agile practitioners. As software eats the world, so brands become increasingly software-centered. Companies grew through various stages to arrive at where they are now. They started with outsourcing software development then created their own internal software departments before finally transitioning into becoming technology companies’ proper. Software is becoming the primary driver of product and brand identity. In a digital economy, software becomes the competitive advantage See: Harvard Business Review

If agile practitioners are masters of software delivery and everything becomes software, the agilist finds themself in a critical role of being a master all delivery. As the agile approach and the methods become generalized to all fields and products, so does the value of the agilist.

Embracing Systems Thinking

The greatest current need is not a particular framework or scaling solution but “systems thinking”. Many, if not most, teams have put into practice basic Scrum, yet there is a lack of alignment to business outcomes and an ability to orchestrate that individual team’s delivery in a coordinated scalable fashion.

It’s easy for an organization to hand everyone a manual and have them apply it but what is truly required is a deep understanding and application of design principles personalized to the needs of the organization. Parallels could be made in the distinctions we make between programmers and software engineers. The distinction is one of scope and scale and in a similar way the greatest need among leaders in the agile space is deep understanding, systems thinking, and the ability to apply that in the form of process engineering.