The 3 Most Common Mistakes Departments Make When Trying To Adopt Agile Practices

Agile has become a buzzword in the world of business and it’s no longer just for tech companies or engineering departments. In fact, agile practices have expanded to marketing, legal, human resources, and beyond. An agile approach allows companies to be more responsive to changes in the market and have a competitive advantage against their rivals that are more structured and hierarchical. When implemented correctly, an agile approach will almost always yield increased productivity, performance, quality, and morale.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, HR departments face mounting pressure to restore employee productivity, improve the employee experience for remote and hybrid workers, reduce hiring times, and make the HR operating model more efficient. These pressures have led to them adopting a more agile approach. However, recent Gartner research found “that 78% of HR leaders have neither a defined strategy nor outcomes in place to guide their application of agile in the function.” Additionally, the lack of communication when implementing changes, unclear timeframes, poor instructions, and no justification of why an agile approach is being followed create a more chaotic environment. Thus doing more harm than good. These are challenges all departments face, not solely HR.

Here are the three most common mistakes organizations make when trying to adopt agile practices.

Trying To Do Too Much At Once

One of the biggest mistakes departments make is trying to change everything at once and have immediate results. Integrating agile practices is a transformation that doesn’t happen overnight. The goal of agility isn’t to be as fast as possible; it’s to have the outcome result in a positive impact. It takes time for employees to acclimate to these new changes and mature in their agile practices. If leaders want employees to embrace agile, they need to involve them from the start, empower them to share their feedback, and have an implementation plan in place.

When quality is neglected in favor of speed, mistakes are made that negatively impact the operations of the business. Mimi Sun Longo, process analyst and project manager for IBM and Gather, emphasized, “part of the process and finishing an agile project is going back and reflecting on what happened. A lot of teams skip that step, but it’s not agile if you don’t reflect and improve.” She explained, “the purpose of being agile is to constantly be improving the process and looking for opportunities to save time or streamline. This reflection helps you to recognize if something you’re working on is actually beneficial to your team.”

Failing To Get Everyone On Board

One of the worst things a department can do is roll out agile without having a well-thought-out and considerate approach. Teams need to first know how to integrate agile into their existing workflow. Otherwise, the team is being set up for failure and the completion of the task or project will be delayed. Additionally, it can result in a culture clash resulting in poor communication, and a lack of cohesiveness and collaboration. All of which help make agile successful. This is why leaders need to support their team throughout the entire implementation of agile and ensure the team has time to adjust to the new way of doing things.

For example, when it comes to onboarding and offboarding employees, HR and IT work closely together. If either IT or HR decides to adopt a more agile approach, then everyone they collaborate with on that project or process needs to be on the same page, aligned with the overall goal, and understand their role. Furthermore, everyone needs to be trained before making changes and implementing agile practices. A common mistake department leaders make is rushing forward with a new idea and no clear plan in an effort to prove they’re agile. Gigi Ji, head of brand and business development at KOKOLU, explained, “an agile team is an informed team. Change can be rather uncomfortable, especially if you’re not informed until the last minute. As such, leaders should help alleviate any concerns and insecurities the team may have. This will build a successful, agile team that will feel empowered while adapting to change effectively.”

Adopting A Piecework Approach

Another mistake departments make is adopting a piecework agile approach. Jimmy Hiller, CEO at Happy Hiller, said, “many departments try to copy agile methods and tools without fully understanding the philosophy of agile which then leads to unsatisfactory results.” Rather than seeing agile as a shortcut to faster results, departments need to understand that it’s a larger transformation effort.

For example, if HR wanted to create an agile team, they must embed the philosophy of agility across all functions such as recruitment, learning, and development, etc. Being agile is more than how quickly a new hire starts after they receive an offer letter, it’s removing all barriers and reducing how long it takes a new to get approved, the interview process, and the layers associated with getting an offer approved. Agility then flows into onboarding the new employee, which extends to the overall employee experience such as having frequent check-ins with employees rather than annual performance reviews, providing an easy-to-understand and transparent process around the framework of compensation, etc. This means departments must consider not only the challenges and investment required but also ensure consistent processes and practices.