what is agile and how does it relate to digital transformation?

The pandemic ended the notion that organizations were prepared for any degree of change. The pace of evolution was swift, and enterprises quickly found that while they were responsive up to a point, nothing could have prepared them for the global crisis that ensued.

In its wake, business leaders recognized the need for greater levels of responsiveness and adaptability – resulting in an uptick in agile adoption.

The very tenets of agility focus on enabling an organization to pivot its existing business strategies to become more resilient, responsive and adaptive to external factors and customer insights – making agile an attractive solution for digital transformation.

why agile?

Embracing and supporting constant change allows organizations to remain competitive; never was this more important than in today’s fast-moving digital world, where companies are expected to keep pace with the ever-evolving demands of their customers.

With digital advancements expedited by the demands of the pandemic, the need for flexibility has never been greater – which is why so many organizations are starting or enhancing their agile transformation journey, in a bid for greater customer visibility, speed to market, improved predictability, and reduced risk.

This works on the premise that the most successful digital transformations have continuous innovation at their heart: overhauling business models and capabilities over time, in incremental steps. This approach allows organizations to launch, learn and relaunch their digital initiatives in response to evolving customer needs and changing market conditions.

benefits of agile to your organization

According to a recent Randstad Technologies survey focused on Digital Enablement, more than 80 percent of C-Suite level digital leaders found that embracing agile allowed their business to respond more rapidly to market changes, and get new products to market faster. Agility also helped 75 percent of organizations to cut costs in their digital transformation journey, while 78 percent found an increase in employee engagement and work satisfaction.

With IT functions often expected to translate nebulous and constantly changing requirements into an easily-maintained, robust, flexible and scalable platform, agile is an attractive proposition. But what are the business benefits of collaborating, iterating, and responding to change and automation on an incremental basis?

1. increased flexibility and speed

Under an agile model, teams can implement changes at short notice. In fact, studies show that technology time to market is reduced by at least 40 percent when agility practices are applied – helping organizations to remain highly competitive in line with market expectations.

2. better quality products

Testing is an integrated part of the agile life cycle, with the customer remaining heavily involved throughout. Identifying, building and testing small segments of scope with iterative feedback along the way increases quality, while reducing testing complexity.

3. improved customer satisfaction

Organizations are becoming increasingly customer centric in today’s highly competitive marketplace. Adopting agile gives the customer complete visibility throughout, and enables a significant reduction in go-to-market time. This approach yields greater satisfaction and adoption, as customer needs and preferences are taken into account.

4. better control

The greater your control, the greater the outcome. Under agile, projects benefit from increased transparency, feedback integration, and quality control – leading to better results overall.

5. improved project predictability

With increased visibility and longstanding teams, agile delivery is more predictable. Frequent communication, transparency, and measurement of results against goals offers predictability and builds trust.

6. reduced risk

Risk is a major consideration in any project: be it waterfall, or agile. But when organizations adopt agile ways of working, shorter delivery cycles allow for early detection of issues or missteps, meaning less futile work.

7. continuous improvement

With agile’s focus on self-reflection, there are continual opportunities to improve products and processes.

Agile transformation can heighten efficiency, increase speed to market, and impress customers and end users – but to see real results, you need the right approach.

how Randstad can help

Whether you want to implement agile but don’t know where to start, have an agile transformation project underway but are already encountering problems, or need the right training and software to bring your vision of agile working to fruition, we can help.

For years, we’ve worked closely with companies of all sizes to implement  and upgrade their agile practices. This responsive approach allows your teams to improve products and services continuously over time.

Our agile solutions include agile transformation, agile training, agile coaching, fully managed agile teams, agile software engineering, agile-managed resources program, and our comprehensive agile maturity model.

Our agility experts can also help to assess the readiness of your organization, train your teams, get your tech up to speed, recruit for any agile role, and implement an agile transformation to be proud of.

Find out more about Randstad’s agile solutions.