Agile Transformation and Digital Transformation

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"Transformation" is a popular word in recent years. In today's competitive digital era, where the life expectancy of a Fortune 500 company has dropped from about 70 years (i.e. half a century ago) to less than a decade, it has become essential for every organization to proceed with the business transformation to keep the effective competition. It's necessary for you to understand the difference between Agile Transformation and Digital Transformation before you adopt any business transformation for your company.

Agile Transformation

Source: Customerthink

• An Agile transformation is an act of transforming an entire organization into an elegant and thrive in a collaborative, flexible, self-organizing, and fast-changing environment based on Agile principles (when we talk about Agile, we can't avoid talking about Scrum and Scrum Artifact).
• Agile principles can be taught throughout any organization to develop teams to benefit from the rewards of healthy agility. The organizational mindset should change and embrace a culture of self-organization and collaboration.
• Agile transformation allows organizations to be reactive and better serve their clients’ interests with less effort, which requires significant support and resources to stick it out when things get bumpy.

Digital Transformation

• Digital transformation is a cultural change that requires organizations to constantly accept challenges, practice a lot and adapt to failure.
• Digital transformation sometimes means abandoning long-established business processes that companies have built, but to adopt the new practices that are still being defined.
• It's difficult to find a definition that suits all the companies since Digital Transformation is different for every company. Digital Transformation is an act of digital technology that transforms business through manual processes with digital processes to create modified existing business processes and customer experience to meet market requirements. It replaces older digital technology to a newer digital technology called Digital transformation.
• Digital solutions may allow you to add efficiencies via automation rather than merely supporting traditional digital methods. It is a foundational change in the organization that delivers value to its clients.

Source: Innovation

10 Benefits of Adopting Agile Method to Digital Transformation

1. Flexibility

The core of Agile is the flexibility it provides. Traditionally, new business plans are usually super-detailed requirements with little room for change, especially at the start of a project. However, Agile processes accept change and even expect change. Teams will have the flexibility to test and switch if they find that other solutions can provide better results for their specific challenges.

2. Business Value First

Agile recognizes that technology alone is not the solution, and that's not true for digital transformation. Only after the team has defined the business challenges, goals, and actual use cases can any new initiative be started. Agile methodologies ensure that you always start with the "why" and that the entire approach is consistent and responsive to business needs.

3. Continuous Improvement

Agile teams are always learning, collaborating, and adjusting throughout the regular iterations, reviewing what is working well and what can be improved. This means that everyone has time to not only expand their knowledge but also to identify, share and apply all of their learning at each stage before moving forward.

4. Frequently Delivered Value

The short and efficient sprint means that features are delivered incrementally as the project evolves. It's not surprising to hear about digital transformation projects that are expected to last one to two years (or even longer). In fact, digital transformation is a process without an end. Therefore, working in Agile ensures that valuable results are delivered in smaller chunks more frequently, rather than waiting up to six months for results that could overwhelm the business.

5. Cost Control

Keeping sprints the same length throughout the project allows the team to know exactly how much work can be done, and therefore to know the cost of each sprint. It also allows for regular budget improvements and frequent changes without incurring high costs.

6. Reduce Risk

The Agile method of digital transformation projects actually eliminates the failure opportunity. Daily updates at the end of each sprint, constant communication, regular testing and collaborative feedback ensure that nothing is missed and that every issue can be captured and addressed early.

7. Good Communication and Engagement

Digital transformation is not possible with just one team. The sales department and IT department need to work together and take a clear understanding of the organizational challenges that need to be addressed in order to be successful. Agile methodology encourages regular communication, ongoing collaboration, feedback sessions, and continuous stakeholder management, which are critical to the success of any transformation project.

8. Absolute Visualization

The visibility across the enterprise can be improved through regular collaboration, communication and updates between multiple Agile teams. Agile ensures that every team member of key stakeholders has the opportunity to know the progress of the project. Daily updates and progress charts provide a specific and practical way to track progress and manage expectations at all levels.

9. High Quality

The quality of work in an Agile environment is improved because testing and optimization start from the beginning. Naturally, it allows you to identify any issues early and make relevant adjustments quickly. Agility in digital transformation also encourages teams to embrace innovation and technical excellence.

10. Higher Team Morale

Without people, there is no change or innovation. Creating a motivated and high-performance team requires a level of self-management that encourages creativity, time for reflection, regular knowledge sharing, and continuous learning -- all of which are advantages of the Agile process. Teams that keep working overtime to meet unrealistic deadlines will inevitably lack the time or energy to think about anything other than tasks at hand, killing any new innovative ideas.

In a conclusion, while digital transformation is often considered popular, it is going nowhere. Organizations are now at a crossroads where they can continue to do business as usual or change the way they work from the inside out. Adopting an Agile method to change encourages continuous innovation andenables companie and to improve customer service to become disruptive market leaders to create the future of their industries.