In today’s dynamic & volatile work environment, adopting the Agile way of thinking should be the way to move forward. Most current-day organizations, not only in the Information Technology sector, have directly embraced the Agile methodology with vigor and thereby have been able to bring a massive alteration in the way they conduct their business. 

Almost all industries on planet earth are being disrupted with better & faster service expectations, on-demand and online. For the customers, your competitor is just a single click away. Therefore, if the organization wants to thrive, it needs to keep pace with such hyper changes in the market scenarios. This is the reason why developing a clear-cut Agile mindset becomes extremely critical. 

Therefore, in this blog, we’ll be talking about the basics of an Agile mindset and how it can be implemented. 

What Do You Mean By An Agile Mindset?

An Agile mindset can be defined as an attitude that helps in supporting the entire Agile work environment by promoting some of the most popular core values, which are as follows:

• Collaboration: The ability to work with the team and thereby also carry empathy for the needs of the customer. It helps in providing value to what you’re trying to achieve.
• Respect: Having a collective team vision, goal, and purpose. 
• Cycles of learning: Trying to respond to changes while also learning from your failures, so that improvements can be made next time onwards.
• Enhancements: Using what you have learned, to help you adapt and improve. The process should start slowly and then proceed at a rapid pace. Enhancements should be made in small incremental changes. 
• More accountability: Taking pride as an owner while also working as a team. You have to be accountable to yourself just as your team will be accountable to themselves. 
• Adaptive: Focusing on delivering more value and the capability to welcome change.

What Are The Benefits Of An Agile Mindset?

The following are some of the most widely noted benefits of implementing an Agile mindset:

• Promotion of responsible management and leadership
• Helps in empowering individuals
• Enhances the sharing of knowledge
• Helps in encouraging self-organization
• Assists in being much more transparent 
• More emphasis on face-to-face interactions
• Better & faster work output
• Better innovation and collaboration
• Increased appreciation for customer value & human resources

Methods To Develop An Agile Mindset

1. Always reflect on your past actions and stay humble

There’s no denying that human error can sometimes produce negative results. Therefore, instead of trying to dwell on your mistakes, the same should be taken as a stepping stone for your better learning experience and thereby moving on. There can be multiple reasons why people tend to make mistakes. Sometimes misunderstanding or misinformation about a certain task within a team can lead to the delay of a project. 

Therefore, your team members should be able to learn from their failures and thereby utilize them to enhance their tactics. In that way, you’ll be gaining knowledge regarding what to do and what not to do, especially when performing a certain task. It’s all about being open-minded and thinking of all possible solutions, which assists in building expertise & wisdom. 

2. Being transparent

To push the factor of transparency, one has to be held accountable as well as share responsibility. This is because, at the end of the day, Agile is a team effort. Any data or information that is being withheld will do more harm than good in the long run. Transparency boosts the morale of the team because it can be used in tracking growth as well as providing performance feedback to the team. 

When all the responsibilities and roles have been clearly defined within the team, there will be much less confusion among the team members. Every team member should have access to the organization’s budget features as well as various analysis of data so that if any glitch gets reported in the process, each team member will be instantly aware of the same. As a result, it will lead to a faster resolution. Transparency from upper management is also a major benefit.

Moreover, transparency leads to better discussions & collaborations among team members. When there is the establishment of trust, it becomes easier for the employees to put faith in their superiors. Therefore, a relationship harmony is established between the team members & the management. 

3. Better communication & collaboration

Collaboration and communication are two of the most vital aspects of achieving a team with an Agile mindset. Every opportunity to foster teamwork should be embraced by the team members themselves. Not everyone in the team is used to being a team player, which is why the concept of comradery & teamwork can make team members feel confident in their area of expertise. In that way, team members will be able to learn more about their peers. 

The motive of acknowledging and appreciating your team members helps in fostering harmony within the entire team. Therefore, a great working relationship is created, leading to an overall increase in the amount of productivity. 

You can even combine software & technology with the same. For instance, collaboration software will help the team members to chat, share work, track task schedules, and conferences and do so much more within themselves. 

The work environment should be made as less stressful as possible because an Agile mindset aims to focus on the ‘we’ aspect rather than the ‘I’ aspect. 

4. Promotion of critical thinking

There’s no doubt that critical thinking is a major part of not only being Agile but also problem-solving as well. When an unforeseen problem arises, the idea should be to act and thereby not react. 

The process of critical thinking involves:

• Promotion of objective thinking
• Systematic approach and structure reasoning to problem-solving
• Determining the validity & evaluating various points of view
• Identifying the issues and their relation to the people involved & the situation

Critical thinking aims to take a proactive stance on any arising problems, leading to less wastage of resources & time with minimal delays in the overall workflow. Critical thinking assists the team to deliver value, crush project deadlines and ultimately satisfy everyone involved. 

5. Focus more on the customer

If you want to create a quality product, you need to adhere to the customer’s ideas, demands, and feedback. The main priority for your team should be the customers, so that desired products & services could be provided. 

Customers should always feel that the product is beneficial to them before they can proceed to buy the same. Therefore, if you can learn to gather customer feedback & demands, you can create the ideal product or service you want. Fulfilling all the customer requirements (or most of them) will lead to great customer satisfaction. 

6. Goals should be clearly defined

To develop an Agile mindset, it’s mandatory to define all the clear achievements & goals that the team should accomplish within a given time frame. By setting up the desired goal, the team can then plan and ultimately implement the tasks to work towards that goal. Goals offer a clear vision of the project that your team is working on. 

Furthermore, by setting up the goals, you and your team will be able to easily figure out the tools that will be required to accomplish the same and thus brainstorm various methodologies. 

Conclusion

Being Agile is having the ability to foresee upcoming issues and thereby think through the ideal solutions for the same. It also means embracing risk in a much more efficient & swift manner. 

In today’s world, trying to be Agile is a way of life that you cannot simply ignore. And when you proceed to adopt an Agile mindset, it will help you to prepare for future scenarios within your organization & industry.