The concept of Agile has become a firmly established methodology over the past decade. True to its core principle, Agile continues to grow and improve as users become more experienced in its application learn how to unlock its benefits.

2019 saw heightened growth, and 2020 is set to be no different. This post will take a look at the trends to follow this year.

Struggle to Adapt

Organisations struggling to adapt to Agile continues to be a problem, despite 18 years since the creation of the Agile Manifesto.

Superficial agility is adopted in many organisations without fully understanding or communicating why. Focusing on practice versus outcome is one of the leading reasons why Agile adoption fails. Remember, Agile is a solution to achieve an outcome, organisation’s must identify what outcome they want to achieve and use Agile to reach that outcome. 

Agility at scale

Implementing the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is the most popular, and most effective way to scale Agile within large organisations.

There are two aspects to SAFe: iterative development, which focuses on breaking large pieces of work down into smaller chunks, and the lean manufacturing mindset of using fewer resources to achieve maximum quality.

As SAFe focuses on the entire process, rather than individual aspects, it is able to identify issues that rise in workflows, implementation and strategies.

Again, the organisation must understand why they want to implement SAFe, identify clear objectives of what they wish to achieve, and apply the correct processes to accomplish those goals.

Visit Scaled Agile Frameworks for more information.

Enterprise Agile

You may have noticed that we touched upon this in our previous article about how the PMO supports the Agile process.

Recently, organisations have started to adapt the Agile principles in other business areas, such as Human Resources, Estates and Customer Services. This cross-departmental expansion is likely to continue at pace in 2020 as the agile and adaptable benefits become more apparent to businesses.

This will reap particular benefits for projects that span departments, allowing the whole organisation to work cohesively, and removing business and functional siloes.

Agile for Life

Whilst Agile can transform efficiency at work, can it also transform our personal efficiency?

The philosophy of Kaizen posits that an improvement in productivity as a gradual and methodical process, with a focus on continuous development. When too many aspects change all at once, it is difficult to maintain the new way of working and leave bad habits behind.

This is true not only of projects and work processes, but also of our own personal goals and ambitions, from getting more exercise, eating healthier, starting a digital detox or switching off from work when we are at home.

Kaizen is becoming more popular with people from all walks of life who are seeking improvement and the attainment of goals. Agile’s rise in popularity shows no signs of slowing any time soon, with new Agile trends predicted into 2020, both for organisations who already use Agile and those seeking to adopt the methodology.