Sandra Maura, CEO of Topmind in Brazil, explains the difference between the methodologies used to make business simpler and smarter. All of these processes can generate better results for companies.
When a company invests in a digitization project, generally one of the great advantages mentioned is agility. In fact, one of the practical gains from IT innovation is the reduction of time spent on operations. Perhaps this is why it has become increasingly common to find the terms “Digital Transformation” and “agile” during the same search. However, it is always good to emphasize that these concepts are not exactly the same thing.
While Digital Transformation uses technological innovation to provide insights and tools that will help make business routines smarter and simpler, agile methodologies are based on adopting specific processes to generate better results for companies. Agile is more related to the operational, cultural and personal thinking model than to one or other technology.
Even more directly, we can say that agile methods are working models that aim to make teams achieve better results in less time. Methods such as Scrum, KanBan and Lean invest in actions such as the creation of multidisciplinary teams (squads), constant experimentation (sprints), recurrent analysis and shorter cycles to literally speed up the development or evolution of a project, product and process.
The gains driven by the agile methodology can be countless. In times like ours, where every minute counts, having recurring responses and deliveries is something that cannot be ignored. It is not by chance that research carried out by MIT teams indicates that the use of these methods has grown at a rate above 30% since 2017 in large Latin American companies. In markets such as the United States and Europe, it is estimated that more than 70% of companies already use this type of approach.
More and more companies want to use agile methods. But why? To understand the reason for this movement, just look at the numbers of businesses that were already using Agile before COVID-19 pandemic in relation to their traditional competitors. McKinsey reports point out that agile organizations had results up to six times greater than their corporations that had not adopted the use of actions such as squads, scrums and sprints, among others.
They had this benefit because they were able to perceive changes more quickly and because they were also able to respond to changes with the speed that traditional operations cannot. They were able to check the information and change routes before the others.
But does this indicate that Agile Transformation means that companies don’t need to digitize their processes and operations? Absolutely. The point here is precisely to show that digitalization and Agile are parallel paths and that they can, mutually, assist in the evolution journey of companies.
For example, think about the importance that real-time data analysis can represent to a company, especially today. Having a complete dashboard, with reliable data on the main indicators of your company, can undoubtedly be an extraordinary ingredient to boost the daily scrums of your agile operation, offering practical knowledge for the adoption of highly efficient strategies. Digital Transformation is a facilitator for generating business, regardless of the model adopted.
With the pandemic imposing recurring changes, increasing agility and analytical intelligence are two actions that go hand in hand. Changes are no longer optional. Therefore, there is no doubt that combining agile and digital can be the simplest way to transform the company’s transformation into an even more valuable proposal.
Agile organizations are designed to be more flexible, comprehensive and resilient, with high adaptability. But what good would the plan do without the content or tools to turn that reality into results? By investing in innovation and support, companies gain opportunities for leaders to find the best path for the plans to be implemented. More than that, they gain in visibility, dynamism and a structure capable of uniting people, processes and systems in favor of the same objective – growth.
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