Agile has changed software development. But some companies are still unsure if Agile can provide benefits for the wider business, from marketing to strategic planning. However, you have to use Agile across your entire company, even if you don't develop software. By doing so, you can see its benefits from a marketing or human resources point of view, and use it to improve collaboration in cross-company planning. When you embrace Agile across the company – from marketing to strategic planning, you will not only improve innovation, you will better meet your organizational objectives. When used along with the Scrum framework, you will create the right type of agile projects for your business. Agile is a way to build a healthy, collaborative product. Every company should use Agile as one part of an overall, integrated strategy, whether it supports the work of the Scrum framework for planning or is a software innovation strategy in itself. Agile is about the future, and every new project, each product to be re-built, every new piece of software, should be treated as such. However, not every company has the necessary bandwidth and resources for Agile, including to create a Scrum team. For many organizations Agile is just a framework around which an innovation project is built. But by embracing Agile across the organization, you will find that the Scrum framework, which should be a key part of your agile innovation strategy, can now take a leading role. To get started you will need to set the groundwork at the executive board or other organizational level. What Is Agile? Agile is not a methodology, it is a way to build something. However, the way something is built is not just by changing the tools around you, but a way to change the way you work, with much more interaction through a structured approach. In Agile there is no single set of rules to follow. What can only be done by changing the way you work, which has become much more effective thanks to the use of Agile tools that support you and support you, allowing you to meet your objectives. The Agile approach emphasizes collaboration and collaboration, both internally and with other organizations. An integrated approach, with people from different organizations, helps to collaborate more efficiently. Working in a structured framework, without getting lost in detail or missing the big picture, provides clarity for the overall strategy and gives you the benefits of collaboration with other groups as well. When used in the right context with Scrum, Agile can become a tool for improving collaboration. The Scrum framework has helped many organizations to improve collaboration internally and with other organizations better. It has also been used to develop an Agile strategy. This article looks at some of the ways that the Agile framework can help you and your teams to plan, create, deliver and collaborate better in a Scrum environment. The biggest risk for your agile strategy is the risk to fail to get the right team in place when you need one. It's also possible that not enough people have the skills to be the right people for the work. However, you can get people in place with the right skills to do agile innovation work, from marketing and strategic planning, by integrating the Agile framework and Scrum. Achieving Your Goals with an Agile Innovation Strategy The Agile framework is not a methodology: it is a set of tools and methodologies enabling you to work in an agile way. However, the way you can work with the Scrum framework and the tools available in an agile way is to create an agile innovation strategy, based on an Agile philosophy. While this might seem like a small difference, if you don't have an already set Agile strategy, the Scrum process will help create the structure and context of your project, enabling you to be flexible in responding to the needs of your organization in a way that improves collaboration in cross-company innovation efforts. The Agile framework itself has been used to drive innovation, with the outcome being that more projects are launched, creating more business value, creating and launching more business value, improving innovation and collaboration. Working in sprints is an agile approach to working in a framework that builds in a series of small steps. The team works on a given deliverable in the context of the current sprint and works with other teams and organizations to create a new, incremental phase of the product life cycle. Scrum defines three phases: Sprint: the focus on the project at hand with the other elements of the sprint are working on a small deliverable Deliver: the most important part of the sprint is that a new software product has been started Sprint is the focus, where the team takes the project on and makes it a reality. In some companies this delivery may be a product, in others an innovation project, but whatever it is, the process gives time for people to change, and to improve and to learn. People at an Agile organization can learn from being asked “How are you?” and can say “I am now a new person.” People at a traditional organization cannot come up with a new answer, they will be stuck trying to make it work. By using an Agile framework, it takes some of the pressure away.
