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LWC: Experience and learn agility

Experience and learn agility

HOW AGILITY CAN BE BROUGHT TO LIFE

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
What can you expect in this article?

The number of companies and organisations that claim to be agile or to have an agile way of working is increasing. In reality, however, there is often a considerable variance in the understanding of agility within an organisation or between teams.

In this blog post, we show how we use our workshop format ‘Experience and learn agility’ to create a common understanding of an agile way of working in order to understand the benefits of agile approaches and be able to use them to create value.

Our understanding of agility

  • Icon: adapt quickly to changing requirments

    Agility refers to the ability of a team or organisation to adapt quickly and flexibly to changing requirements and to operate effectively in dynamic environments such as the VUCA world.

  • Icon Mindset

    Agile teams share and live common values through the agile mindset and act according to common principles. This includes the commitment to a common goal, the definition and subsequent independent realisation of tasks. This promotes adaptability, innovation and collaboration.

  • Icon: seeing eye to eye

    Agile teams are characterised by cross-hierarchical, eye-level communication, preferably face-to-face. They show the courage to try out new things and adapt flexibly when customer requirements change. In doing so, they never lose focus on the essentials: Creating value and avoiding unnecessary work. Mutual respect and trust are a fundamental prerequisite.

The understanding of agility is often subject to misconceptions that lead to the hoped-for success not materialising, the added value of the changed way of working not being seen and consequently leading to rejection. In the following, we describe the most common misunderstandings that we encounter in practice and what we believe agility does not mean:

    Agility means chaos

    Many people think that agility means working without structure or planning. On the contrary, agile working methods define clear goals and processes that allow the necessary flexibility to adapt to changing conditions and requirements.

    Agility is only for IT teams

    Although the agile way of working has its origins in software development, it is now established in many other areas such as marketing, human resources and product management. Agility is a mindset that can be applied in many different areas of an organisation where the aim is to create new solutions.

    Agility means reacting without planning

    Agility enables a quick response to customer feedback, but does not mean that there is no long-term planning or forecasting. Agile organisations and teams continue to plan, but adjust their plans in short cycles to incorporate new insights and respond to changing circumstances.

    Agile teams don't need leadership

    Leadership is crucial in agile organisations, but in a different way. Agile leaders support teams instead of issuing instructions, thereby encouraging self-organisation and creating a learning culture. They also promote a culture of trust and collaboration.

    Agility means fast results at all costs

    Due to the iterative working method, results are delivered quickly, but the jointly agreed ‘Definition of Ready’ (DoR) means that all participants are aware of the acceptance criteria so that quality can be continuously improved. The MVP approach allows the team to focus on directly realisable customer benefits in order to provide a usable product and receive prompt feedback for sustainable further development.

    In order to strengthen the understanding of agility in companies, LEITWERK has designed an interactive workshop format ‘Experience and learn agility’.
    Experience and learn agility

    brain

    After one of our customers founded a team that deals with transformation topics, the need arose to deal with the topic of agility in order to establish a customised way of working. This gave rise to the concept of our workshop ‘Experience and learn agility’ with the aim of recognising individually where it makes sense to use agility.

    In our workshop, we emphasise the importance of first creating and demonstrating a common understanding of agility, as otherwise misunderstandings could arise. We reflected on the necessity of agility in the VUCA world and worked out a sensible application in our own environment.

    Practical workshops

    Through practical exercises and working on use cases from your own working environment using the Lego Serious Play® method, we provide concrete insights into agile approaches without having to implement a complete framework perfectly. We show you how to strengthen the self-efficacy of your teams through an agile mindset and how agile principles can be integrated into everyday working life. The basic enabling Scrum also provides an insight into one of the most common agile frameworks.

    With a group size of 10-14 people, we offer you a supportive environment to deepen your understanding of agility and try out agile roles within use cases using the Lego Serious Play® method.

    Interested? We will be happy to customise the workshop format to your specific requirements.

    Understanding agility with Lego Serious Play®

    Lego Serious Play®
    leo serious play - agile method

    Lego Serious Play® is an innovative method for group work and problem solving in which participants visualise and explore complex topics with the help of Lego elements. This experience-orientated technique promotes creative solutions and interactive communication, improves collaboration and enables deeper insights into complex issues.

    The Lego Serious Play® method is ideal for this workshop format as it allows participants to familiarise themselves with the goals of agility in a playful way.

    • Our ‘Experience and learn agility’ workshop concept is suitable for
    • Teams that have reached the limits of their current way of working
    • Organisational units that have a different understanding of agility
    • Employees who are dealing with the introduction/transformation to agile working methods
    • Start-ups that have not yet implemented a fixed way of working and are looking for inspiration
    Arrange a no-obligation consultation to recognise the benefits of agile methods and take your team to a new level of collaboration.
    Contact us!
    Kontaktperson Carina Werner
    Your contact person
    Carina Werner
    +49 89 189 235 96
    carina.werner@leitwerk-consulting.com
    ...or write us via our contact form
    Contact us!

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