So, Agile is iterative, it encourages businesses to listen to their users and it helps to give teams a clear direction and focus. But, adopting it isn’t without its challenges…

First of all, if teams are used to more traditional, linear ways of working it can be difficult to fully embrace Agile. Agile ways of working require a real shift in mindset and culture, and teams need to be encouraged to ‘fail fast’, which they may find challenging. Companies that are used to ‘waterfall’ processes will often seek to make sure outputs or products are perfect before release, which means Agile’s focus on continuous iteration and release of working outputs can feel alien and risky.

To help mitigate this, businesses should help nurture a mindset where employees understand that learning is the main objective - even when it comes to the team’s failures. If you release a prototype that fails to meet user needs, then this is still a learning point and will help teams to improve in the future.

The next potential sticking point is the way that Agile encourages teams to be adaptive and approach problems in different ways.

If a team is used to working in a more traditional way, they may become fixated on one way of solving a problem, rather than listening to user feedback and adapting accordingly. They might then seek to be proven right about their chosen solution, and spend too much time going down the wrong path and working on something that isn’t the best option.

As these challenges make clear, Agile ways of working are as much about the mindset a company or team has, as it is about the methodologies used. It’s all about company culture and the behavior of different teams, as well as being about the adaptive process.

There’s no one way of ‘doing’ Agile, but its methods do provide many benefits for companies, as well as end users! It’s important that teams find the methods and tools that work for them and keep in mind the different values and principles that form the foundation of this whole way of working.

So, what are you waiting for? Give Agile a go and see what it can do for you! Until next time, thanks for joining us.

Adoption Challenges