Are You Doing Agile Right?

What is the Agile Innovation Process, and what are best practices, tools and online templates for teams and organizations?

By Upboard

Today, everyone wants to be agile. It’s seen as sexy and cool to be agile, but most people don’t know what the term really means. Still, concepts like agile design and agile software development have taken over the popular zeitgeist recently, and businesses are looking for ways to develop the agile mindset at every possible opportunity.

There’s little surprise that the agile framework has taken off. Agile is a way of thinking which revolves around the idea of designing a product, solution or service quickly in order to get feedback from customers. An organization can then continually tweak the product so that it can be improved over time. This process can be transformative to businesses across various industries, especially in the realm of software development and manufacturing. Still, when it comes to truly tapping into the potential of the agile process, you must look to innovation teams for inspiration.

The Agile Innovation Process is a methodology for continually improving and adapting to competitive and consumer conditions in the marketplace. The main purpose of the methodology is to create a product or service that disrupts the market and forces competitors to adapt or exit the space because of the level of disruption created. This goal is met by adopting an agile framework which splits up larger innovation initiatives into smaller projects with simple, manageable tasks. These tasks are then continuously reassessed in order to streamline the overall process of innovation and help drive further growth.

The agile innovation process is all about driving real change and innovation quickly (and cheaply) across a business. When considering the best way to implement an agile innovation framework, consider these four key questions that all businesses must answer before they can develop an agile innovation process of their own:

1. Who will drive the innovation process? The organization must choose a senior leader or stakeholder of some kind to buy into the process of agile innovation if there is to be a successful implementation of this methodology.
2. What internal business processes do we need to implement a change? The key businesses processes that need to be developed ahead of implementing an agile innovation process of this kind are 1) some kind of roadmap or plan for innovation 2) definition of roles and responsibilities of team members.
3. How do we enable faster decisions? Look for ways to reduce the delays that arise from barriers in the decision-making process. Enable individual team members to make decisions based on a set of rules.
4. How do we involve people from inside and outside of the organization? Consider how you can enable both experts from outside the organization and leaders at lower levels within your own organization to contribute to a greater extent.

The Agile Innovation Process is often considered a standalone approach to support innovation and idea development. If you’d like to learn more about how you can help your organization drive innovation using agile methodologies, check out upBOARD’s customized Agile Innovation Template.