4 agile team best practices to follow in the enterprise

Two common mistakes companies make when attempting to become more agile is to attempt a “big bang” approach in which teams are working in a Waterfall fashion one day and agile the next.

“Traditional organizations spend years becoming agile. As they progress, they learn another important principle: Agile is not a destination but a journey,” Zucker said. “Vibrant Agile organizations are continually adapting the way they work.”

Adaptation can be seen in the progression of software teams as they mature from Agile to DevOps to CI/CD. However, a challenge in expanding Agile software development is that what works for one team may not work for others.

Today, the concept of agile teams is expanding beyond software development to the business at large. In fact, DevOps is the basis for an entire array of “Ops” functions including BizOps, MarketingOps, AIOps, MLOps and DataOps, to name a few.

Aníbal Abarca

BizOps is worth mentioning here because in this context, an agile team owns a “value stream” — or product — throughout its lifecycle. Unlike DevOps teams, which focus on software development and delivery, BizOps ensures that software development aligns with business objectives.

Both types of teams use metrics to evaluate whether they’re meeting their goals. For example, DevOps metrics may include items like release velocity and error rates, whereas BizOps metrics may include operational efficiency or customer satisfaction.

“First and foremost, agile teams must stay close to their customer and understand the business goals and [how to solve] core problems,” said Aníbal Abarca, CTO at global product development company Wizeline. “That requires entrusting the team to iterate and design a product that will add value, rather that providing specific requirements and guidelines.”

Janetta Ekholm

Since almost every company is a software company today, they’re creating products that should be advancing the organization’s overall business goals. Not surprisingly, the Agile development concept of iteration has facilitated the switch from painstakingly planned products to minimally viable products, which are enhanced over time.

“Teams should have a clear goal and they should be organized around a real customer value stream, not on a certain technology area such as a back-end team or a mobile team,” said Janetta Ekholm, head of ways of working and Agile coach at digital innovation and engineering company Futurice.