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PART I
What Is Agile Working?
While interviewing employees of large public- and private-sector organizations for a major survey on agile working, it became clear to me that many employees didnāt really āgetā what agile working was about. With an increasing number of organizations introducing agile working initiatives surely they will stand a higher chance of success if their employees have grasped the concept of agile working. My interviews provided evidence that most employees are familiar with flexible working, hardly surprising, as this term has been around the beginning of this century. However agile working was coined around 2008 and has not yet permeated nearly as far. Confusingly, sometimes agile working is used as a synonym for flexible working.
Furniture providers, workplace designers, and architects often describe a digital workplace as an extension of the physical workplace. But they have a vested interest as providers of furniture and physical facilities in talking about a place of work.
The new generations of workers are unlikely to accept the idea of working in confined physical spaces, however attractively furnished. Digital workspaces should support agile working to serve the needs of all employees including those who do not have ready access to desks. As Paul Allsopp, of the Agile Organisation, says āthese days itās all about screens, not desks.ā Not every employee has a desk but most have access to a screen on at least one device. Digital workspace rather than digital workplace is a more appropriate description of where work activities are conducted, if currently a less common term and is used in the title of this book although the digital workplace is used in citations and other references.
With agile working there should be fewer constraints on where and when people can work with accommodation built around job tasks and technology allocated according to their job role. While more challenging in some sectors than others, when implemented correctly agile working and the digital workspace provide a positive employee experience, and can boost alignment, engagement, and retention.
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CHAPTER 1
Defining Concepts of New Ways of Working
Defining Agile Working and How It Is Different from Flexible Working
Flexible working is used as a general term to describe working at times and places away from the traditional full-time nine-to-five office-based employment. Flexible working has two dimensions of flexibility:
Time, that is, when employees choose to work. There are many examples of this dimension: employees can work at different times of the day (e.g., flexitime), different days of the week, (as part-time or compressed hours, job share), or specific weeks of the year (term-time working, annualized hours, etc.).
Location, that is, where employees choose to work. Again there are many examples of this dimension: in addition to the office, employees can choose to work at, or from, home, at work hubs, at cafes, while traveling.
As shown in Figure 1.1 agile working introduces a third dimension of flexibility, autonomy, that is, how people choose to work. In an organization adopting agile working employees are empowered to decide how they work to meet the goals set for them to the standards required. There may be some limitations on agile workers such as operating within the limits of their authority or competence and observing legal and regulatory requirements but they are not overly dependent on formal processes and procedures. So by this definition, a way of working that uses the same processes and practices outside of normal working hours and/or at different locations is not agile working as it lacks this third dimension called autonomy.
Figure 1.1 The dimensions of agile working
Some job roles will more readily accommodate this freedom, for example, sales roles traditionally have a significant degree of autonomy as they are set targets and are typically lightly supervised. Operational roles can be more challenging as they are often prescribed by detailed processes, and it is not impossible to introduce agile working into operational roles.
Further Differences Between Agile Working and Flexible Working
Flexible working is generally regarded as primarily a benefit to employees. However, when implemented well agile working should provide benefits for both employers and employees. This advantage is another way of distinguishing agile working from flexible working.
The goals of organizations in adopting agile working are to create a more responsive, efficient, and effective organization, which improves business performance and increases customer satisfaction.
The goals of organizations in adopting agile working are to create a more responsive, efficient, and effective organization, which improves business performance and increases customer satisfaction. By empowering their employees to work how, where, and when they choose there is evidence that they increase their productivity and provide service improvements by working in a way that suits them best. There is the very real prospect of a win-win situation. Organizations become more responsive and effective and their employees gain more control over the way they work.
Another critical difference between agile working and other forms of flexible working is commitment. While flexible working can be readily implemented with todayās technology, agile working requires far more commitment from management and employees. However, the potential gains are much greater. Many flexible working initiatives have been quite small-scale with one-off savings but agile working promises transformational benefits of service improvements as well as continuing cost savings.
The Agile Organisation defines agile working as
bringing people, processes, connectivity and technology, time and place together to find the most appropriate and effective way of working to carry out a particular task. It is working within the guidelines (of the task) but without boundaries (of how you achieve it).1
How Agile Working and Agile Software Development Are Linked to Agile Organizations?
This book is about a way of working, called agile working, but agile has become an overused word. Agile can also refer to a form of software development and even more confusingly āAgile Workingā is also being used in the context of software development. The UK Civil Service deliberately uses the term āSmart Workingā to differentiate it from agile software development. Agile is also used as a label to describe an organization as a whole. So how do these terms link together?
The adoption of new ways of working has given us a lexicon of terms: homeworking, mobile working, remote working, smart working, agile working, and the latest term is the digital workplace. For a definition of these terms see Appendix A: Glossary. These terms have emerged in a journey as organizations have adopted new workstyles. Each new approach has promised new benefits but often the reality of their implementation has not always provided the hoped-for gains.
There remains much confusion in the terms associated with new ways of working. It is the concepts, benefits, and requirements that these new ways of working have introduced that are important and not the labels that are often carelessly applied.
Agile Software Development
Agile software development is an umbrella term for a set of methods and practices based on the values and principles expressed in the Agile Manifesto.2
The values are:
ā¢ Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
ā¢ Working software over comprehensive documentation
ā¢ Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
ā¢ Responding to change over following a plan
Solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams utilizing the appropriate practices for their context.3
Some of the 12 principles have a more generic application beyond software development:
ā¢ No.1 Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through the early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
ā¢ No.2 Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customerās competitive advantage.
ā¢ No 5 Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
ā¢ No.10 Simplicityāthe art of maximizing the amount of work not doneāis essential.
ā¢ No. 12 At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
Principles 5 and 10, in particular, resonate with the principles of agile working.
Agile project management is a methodology that has evolved from the agile software development approach and uses short development cycles called āsprintsā to focus on continuous improvement in the development of a product or service. This approach also has more generic applications with benefits such as the more rapid deployment of solutions.
Agile Organizations
Agile is a word that has no negative associations. All organizations would like to describe themselves as agile, and no organization would want to be labeled as not being agile. But what are agile organizations?
Your Dictionary4 defines agility as āthe ability to move nimbly with speed and ease.ā This is a definition of physical agility that could also be applied to an organization that adopts agile wo...
