Agile management: how your company can be more productive

More important than meeting customer demands within deadlines is delivering value with the product. This is the focus of agile management: optimizing processes and bringing the client closer to project development, in order to add value to deliveries. 

If you feel that your team tries too hard and is unable to achieve ideal results, the time has come for you to adopt agile management. This way, it is possible to make processes more dynamic and efficient, ensuring that efforts are directed in the correct way. 

In this article you will discover how agile management can make your team more productive, the best methodology for your company and much more.

What is agile management?

Agile management seeks to make processes more efficient, interactive and flexible. Of course, the objective is to deliver more quality to the customer in less time, as the name suggests. However, in addition, agile management will focus on getting the best out of the team. 

The idea of ​​agile management came from the Japanese company Toyota, after the Second World War. At the time, the company needed a production system that could make the best use of and direct resources. 

Since then, agile management and methodologies have evolved more and more. Until 2001, the agile manifesto was created, a document written by software development professionals. 

Each of these professionals used a different methodology, but they had one difficulty in common: delivering high-quality products within deadlines. In other words: the development processes were not being executed well. In this way, resources were not well used and the teams’ efforts often ended up not contributing effectively to the success of the projects. 

If you want to know more about what the agile manifesto was and what its foundations are, check out another article from the Gipo blog: How agile methodologies help IT teams. 

Today, the focus is on helping you find the right methodology for your company and increasing your team’s productivity. Furthermore, we will show you how to apply successful agile management.  

After all, what is productivity and why is it important?

The concept of productivity is directly linked to production. According to Google’s Portuguese dictionary, provided by Oxford Languages, the world’s largest publisher of dictionaries, productivity is “a characteristic or condition of what is productive”. 

In this sense, it is common for people to understand that being productive means producing and achieving results. They are not wrong, however, it is easy to get confused when it comes to productivity. 

Being busy all the time can give the feeling of productivity, but this is not always an effective practice. 

Productivity is linked to the idea of ​​producing with quality. In this way, it is possible to say that being productive means producing more, with more quality and with the least amount of resources possible. 

Therefore, productivity has become essential for those who want to stand out from the competition. Those who produce more, using less, guarantee sustainable growth, an ideal scenario for any company. 

But how does this relate to agile management? 

Agile management allows you to make the best use of resources. It is based on interaction cycles, called sprints. With each sprint, a new, more developed and improved version of the product is presented to the customer. In this way, agile management values ​​the dynamic relationships between the team and the client, making development more assertive regarding the client’s needs. 

This characteristic of agile management avoids rework and guarantees the quality of the final product. This way, the team is dedicated to improving with each sprint, ensuring that efforts are directed in the correct way. 

With the correct direction of the team’s time and efforts, product quality tends to increase and delivery time tends to reduce. 

How does agile management work? 

With the link between agile management and productivity made, the time has come to understand how this type of management works in practice. 

Agile management requires the adoption of a methodology. Each of them has its particularities, but they all follow the same principles proposed in agile manifesto. 

As stated in the last topic, agile methodologies will seek to streamline the project development process. The idea is to optimize the team’s ability to adapt through interaction cycles. 

That said, we can highlight adaptability as one of the characteristics of an agile team. With each interaction cycle, it is necessary to make adjustments, improvements and be innovative when finding solutions to development obstacles. 

If the project followed a traditional development methodology, adjustments would have to be requested after the project was completed, causing the team to have to take steps backwards. 

Agile management divides each part of the project by priorities. At the beginning of the project, everything that needs to be done must be defined. This list of tasks is called the product backlog. The backlog will be used by the team to start new tasks until the end of the project. 

With frequent deliveries each cycle, the customer has a greater participation in the project, contributing to the delivery of product value. With each validation carried out, the customer understands that they have a voice in production. 

Furthermore, transparency becomes a fundamental part of management. It guarantees greater credibility for the team, which does not worry about presenting the difficulties and challenges of the project. 

Difference between agile management and traditional management 

At this point, it became clear that the main characteristic of agile management is the dynamicity and flexibility of interactions. But how does this differ from traditional project management?
Traditional management methods will prioritize planning before execution. 

Each task has its defined deadlines, priorities and responsible parties. This allows managers to have control over everything that will happen, following the project roadmap. 

In this sense, it can be said that traditional methods make project development more “rigid”. With each step and stage defined, it is difficult to be flexible about changes. 

Hence the difference between agile methodologies. The market has increasingly demanded more dynamic relationships with customers. The flexibility of agile management allows the product to be improved in each interaction cycle, according to what was requested. 

There are also methodologies that combine both forms of management to optimize your processes, such as the water – scrum – fall method, which combines the waterfall (traditional) and Scrum (agile) methodologies. 

But in these cases, research shows that the chances of failure are even greater than traditional methodologies and less success than is achieved by agile ones. A 2018 survey conducted by Disciplined Agile consortium demonstrates these points. 

How to apply agile management to your business  

Applying agile management in your company requires, above all, commitment. But some steps are essential to start practicing this type of management. 

Documentation 

Firstly, it is important to document the objective of adopting agile management. This record is important so that it is always clear what the needs were that led the team to adopt this model. 

Furthermore, documentation is necessary so that it is clear which methodology will be adopted. In this sense, it is necessary to define which principles will be taken into consideration during the development of the project. 

Everything must be documented. From the role of each team member to how interactions will be carried out. 

Training 

Another very important step in implementing management is team training. Methodologies such as Scrum, for example, require a level of maturity and training to be executed, as each member plays a fundamental role. 

Training members will be essential for the smooth running of operations. 

New approach with customers

Updating and contextualizing customers regarding the change in management is essential. They need to be aligned with what will be done, since, from this moment on, their participation in the projects will be even greater. 

Keep customers informed about what the interaction cycles will be like and align all information about the processes. This way, the customer can prepare to contribute in the best way possible during product development.

Start implementing 

With documentation completed, teams trained and customers aligned, the implementation can begin to be applied to projects. Start with a project that didn’t go as expected before the new management was adopted. Discover how it could have been developed better and how new methods can help solve the problems found. 

With practice comes perfection. With each new project, try to understand what is working and what needs to be optimized in the process. Don’t be afraid to change anything: this is one of the characteristics of agile management. 

Adjust and change procedures according to the results. Pay attention to task data and information. 

To do this, it is essential to use a task management tool. With a tool like Gipo, your team can have all of a project’s tasks in one place.

Furthermore, with Gipo’s kanban board and time tracking, it is possible to monitor projects and identify positive and negative points. 

Through time tracking, you can know how much time your team is spending on each activity, making it easier to find bottlenecks and obstacles in the process. 

What is the perfect agile methodology for your company?

Last but not least, it’s time to find out which agile methodologies are most used by the market and the benefits of each of them. 

Scrum 

THE Scrum It is the most used methodology on the market today. According to the 15th Annual State Of Agile Report, the Scrum It is used by 66% of companies that have incorporated agile management into their activities. 

This is because the methodology can be synonymous with agile management. Scrum works through calls sprints, interaction cycles between the development team and the product owner, the customer representative. With each cycle, an improved version of the product is presented until it is finalized. 

THE Scrum allows interaction between team and client and ensures focus on the product, differentiating itself from traditional methodologies that focus on the project. Additionally, the team can define how much time will be needed for each sprint. Learn more about the functions, characteristics and aspects of scrum in the article SCRUM: increase the productivity of your IT team

Kanban

The focus of this methodology is to make project development visual. The idea is to divide tasks into 3 stages: pending, in progress, completed. 

This way, it is possible to monitor the progress of activities visually. Using a management tool that has the kanban as a resource, it is still possible to know how long each task spent at each stage. This way, it is possible to identify ways to optimize the flow. 

THE kanban still allows a combination of Scrum, using the best of each of them for an agile methodology ideal for teams that want to be more productive. This combination is called crumble. 

With Gipo, you have complete freedom to create your steps according to your company’s processes. Thus, it is possible to use the kanban board and still optimize it with scrum practices.

Lean

The methodology Lean focuses on the use of resources. Your objective is to achieve the best possible result, with the least amount of resources available.

It is made up of 5 pillars that serve as the basis for its application: 

1. Value;
2. Value stream;
3. Continuous flow;
4. Pull production;
5. Perfection.

Adopting an agile methodology means adding value to the product, streamlining the development process and increasing your team’s productivity. But to do this, you need to know how to apply them.

Pay attention to each of the application stages and choose the methodology that best suits your company. Thus, your company’s results only tend to increase and customer satisfaction becomes an essential factor for the sustainable growth of the organization.