By now, everyone knows that introducing agile methodologies into business operations usually translates into faster deliveries, greater productivity and increased adaptability and responsiveness to change. Everywhere you look, diverse teams in almost every industry are successfully leveraging agile practices to beat their deadlines and achieve their goals.
Yet in the world of IT infrastructure and operations, the agile adoption journey seems to be fighting an uphill battle. As a critical component in any technological product, IT usually prioritizes stability over speed. At the same time, IT has evolved beyond a ‘keeping the lights on’ mentality and is now increasingly focused on delivering mission-critical infrastructure and operational services that directly impact the customer experience.
How will you possibly juggle it all?
While tackling an IT project using an agile framework may sound appealing if you’re looking to speed up deliveries and boost productivity, complex infrastructure projects require cross-functional alignment and tons of external and internal input — which usually calls for time and patience to do correctly.
However, at its core agile is a frame of mind that helps solve complex problems. Different teams implement agile in different ways. You don’t necessarily have to go all-in, and instead can apply agile in a piecemeal manner to specific scenarios where speed is called for and iteration is allowed.
If done properly, agile can be applied to IT in specific scenarios — for example in the build phase of a project — to speed up implementation and increase flexibility.
Here are 3 reasons your IT should be well on its way to agile:
- Global products need to adhere to global regulations. In highly-regulated industries, like insurance, finance or healthcare, product planning should be done carefully to ensure no critical mistakes are made. But once the planning is done, a slow and steady approach should give way to agile approaches to enable quick updates in response to fast-changing regulations and new technologies.
- Agile businesses need agile infrastructure support. Driving the agile adoption journey requires more than just a shift in thinking — it requires software and network components to support it. Applying agile principles to IT infrastructure means that your IT enables incremental deliveries, rapid deployment and allows lightweight deployment options. That way, your teams can update software components in a modular fashion, easily collaborate in a secure manner, and accelerate deliveries.
- IT is under increased pressure to deliver more projects, faster than ever before. In our modern, tech-driven world IT has its hand in everything. Everyone from marketing to HR and accounting is leveraging new technology to automate processes and increase productivity — and IT teams need to cope with the increased workload that this demands.
According to McKinsey, agile approaches can enable IT groups to boost their productivity by 25 to 30 percent. Using agile IT infrastructure, service delivery is improved and digital products benefit from shortened time to market.
Clarizen’s collaborative work management solutions help teams simplify work processes and get more done. Teams use Planview AdaptiveWork Go to ease the transition into agile — they get the freedom to work the way they want by personalizing workflows and boards. Seamless synch with Planview AdaptiveWork One means that you enjoy full control alongside total transparency into your teams’ progress.
