By Tracy Brower, Ph.D., MM, MCR and Tim Schipper, Steelcase IT Manager
Agile is the hot new work process and it’s difficult to ignore. With a work methodology that boasts productivity improvements, enhanced effectiveness, and fulfilling work for its team members, it seems like a panacea. The danger, of course, with any new work approach is to ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’ and assume that the best new work systems are better than anything that came before. In addition, Agile brings a requirement for us to learn an innovative system of working and figure out how best to support it. This is no small challenge given our already full-to-overflowing workloads.
The good news is that history is a guide, and working in an agile environment isn’t so vastly different than the effectiveness of Lean methodologies from the 90’s. Lean started in the factory and many companies sought to apply its work flows to white collar work from healthcare to service, many with mixed success. It’s a new day however, with agile work environments taking hold in IT and expanding to all kinds of work beyond software development.
Far from methodologies that apply only in manufacturing or in IT, these work approaches can enlighten us in some of the most effective ways of working — for all kinds of work. Here are some of the lessons learned:
FOCUS ON THE CUSTOMER
Definition: In Lean, focus is on the customer and value is defined by the customer. Takt time is the rate at which new work needs to be produced and faster isn’t better. The ideal is to produce work at the pace the customer demands it. Similarly, Agile starts with story cards which are written from the customer’s point of view and based on the customer’s criteria for success. A key expectation of the Product Owner (the customer representative in Agile) is to embed with the team and stay deeply connected to the work of the team. In addition, the Product Owner’s role is is to be a liaison with the Business Owner and other stakeholders. Show and tell sessions at the conclusion of each sprint provide the opportunity for the team to report to the customer on their progress and the value they’ve created in that portion of the work.
Lesson: This enduring theme of customer first, customer embeddedness, and customer centrality is surely a lesson for our work. I used to work with a leader who said regularly, “if you’re not serving the end-customer, you better be serving someone who is.”