Mike Lyons shows how Agile principles work outside software: fast feedback, prioritized backlogs, and cross-functional teams. He walks through examples from marketing and HR to Zara's apparel operations and a family using Kanban to organize a move.
And so once we start using Agile for software delivery and we start to see the benefits of this sort of fast feedback approach to really creating things that customers and users want and desire, you begin to ask yourself, well, where else could we use this sort of agile beyond software development? And remember, there's certain pieces of agility, of iterative delivery that we can hold and use across all sorts of different enterprises and organizations. Remember, our focus is around fast feedback, a prioritized list of work. We know sort of what the next most important things are. Collaboration and transparency with cross functional teams, the ability to really design and build and deploy the thing of value, whatever that is. And again, that shared understanding that is created through agility. Well, like how can that apply to other industries, other departments within even IT corporations? Well, that thinking, that sort of, you know, approach to work, well, it applies all over the place. Let's give you some examples. Just within any organization, the ability to apply agility and lean thinking to marketing. For example, marketing within an organization has got to be highly responsive to what the client demands are. Potential customer needs might be agile. Human resources. Human resources, you know, they've got to be able to respond quickly to existing team members and employees needs, but also, you know, human resources that are involved in recruitment and recruiting new folks. Highly agile type work going on in those departments. And that might be at an IT shop, a software type company, a delivery company like that. But what about companies that don't focus on it, that don't deliver IT products and services? Take for example AIR methods. They're an organization that is involved in medical transport of people in emergency situations. Well, their training curriculum is built using Agile. Zara is a clothing manufacturer who reduced the time for introducing new clothing lines from years, sometimes down to months in the clothing industry. Another interesting one is Scaled Agile. Scaled Agile, they're not a software company, they're a provider of curriculum, training curriculum, and they use the Scaled Agile framework in their organization. Here's a fun one. Scrum your wedding. Com Scrum your wedding. You can hire a Scrum Master to help plan and execute your wedding using Scrum Practices or even just around the house for family chores. The idea of making work visible using a Kanban board is very popular. I myself actually moved our family from Colorado to Texas a little while ago. And on the back of our pantry door I had put sticky notes in order of each of the things we needed to do. And when we were doing them, we'd move them to the, you know, doing column. And when they were done, they'd move over to done, but it was a prioritized list of work and it was highly visible. Well, these are agile principles, and moving your family across country has very little to do with software. So, you know, agile is used frequently beyond software development within organizations, but also within different industries.
