Introduction
Agile development is one of the approaches to managing changes throughout a product life cycle. This method is associated with flexible strategies, continuous support, rapid responses to stakeholders’ input, and improved cross-team collaboration (Hughes, 2019). The Agile Manifesto outlines the best practices that support the paramount features of this approach in the ever-changing environment in which modern companies operate. Barclays, a multinational bank that is more than 330 years old, is one such firm that requires a constant stream of innovations to remain well-adapted to its market (Smart, 2018). The company achieved tremendous success through the mindful application of the Disciplined Agile framework, which was first launched in 2015. In this essay, the impact of a properly integrated Agile manifesto will be reviewed in the example of a British financial services company Barclays.
Discussion
Due to its considerable age, the company was understandably very traditional in its many aspects of management. However, a firm that does not transform when the external environment forces it to do so is doomed to fail. Over 90% of senior executives from major companies agree that agility is a paramount quality for their companies in the long term, although only 10% were able to state that they are already agile enough (Denning, 2018). Barclays is not an exception, as its flexibility was lagging behind its competitors. Therefore, a special team focused on updating the company’s mindset was explicitly created to implement Agile into Barclays’ way of working (Smart, 2018). Merely understanding the concept of Agile is not sufficient: this approach must be modified for the specific circumstances of a firm through its top managers. Over the years, the changes such a group made for Barclays are worthy of a case study in proper Agile management.
First of all, the company’s employees had to be ready for significant changes. Adopting a new framework is not an instant process, as it requires teams to be gradually formed and trained to remain effective under a different leadership style in an environment that provides significantly more freedom than they experienced before (Denning, 2018). The team that was formed to supervise the transformation had to make the change feel as natural as possible and monitor possible barriers to implementation, such as the employees’ resistance to change.
In Barclays, the change began with a few selected groups that had the most potential to adopt such a work ethic. The success of these teams served as an inspiration for others when they were switching to a new paradigm (Denning, 2018). The ability to self-organize is the key factor in this transformation, and teaching it through exemplary teams is shown to be a viable strategy. At first, the number of Agile projects in Barclays was at around 4%, while in 2018, it was 65% (Smart, 2018). However, the transformation did not stop with changing the attitudes of a company’s employees and leaders. Indicators of the firm’s performance were selected, such as time per cash manipulation, the safety of transactions, and the optimization of logical paths within the firm’s network (Smart, 2018). In accordance with the Agile manifesto, the most efficient methods for each category in focus were selected by all involved stakeholders and improved by the newly formed teams.
A proper understanding of the Agile approach implies flexibility in all aspects of a company’s workflow. This notion includes the transformation process itself, as the change team leader Jonathan Smart acknowledged that the implementation will not be fully completed ever and must be seen as a goal in itself (Smart, 2018). Barclays was able to kickstart the changes with the help of experts in Agile, and now the adoption of new practices lies at the firm’s very core. Smart (2018) shares the incredible results of his team’s work, stating that “twice as many work items getting cleared up in half the time at half the cost, with 70% fewer incidents” (para. 15). This continuous assessment is critical in the Agile manifesto, as it promotes the usage of the best technologies, practices, and designs in all aspects that affect the company’s efficiency.
Conclusion
In conclusion, under proper management, Agile practices provide a company with numerous positive changes to its workflow, such as higher autonomy, improved teamwork skills, and customer-oriented decisions. However, it requires strict discipline within an organization, as Agile teams may struggle to prioritize meaningful changes over irrelevant customer requests and find themselves moving in a direction opposite to the initial goal. This transformation can be seen in the example of Barclays, which achieved tremendous success by creating Agile teams under a different leadership style. This framework pushed the company’s adaptability to market fluctuations and demands. However, the firm had to focus on discipline throughout this change process to ensure that teams would perform with as few incidents as possible and keep the safety of stakeholders’ assets in mind. The key concepts from the Agile manifesto are apparent in Barclay’s new way of working, as the company pushes toward both customers’ and employees’ viewpoints when making any adjustments or new features.
References
Denning, S. (2018). The 12 stages of the Agile transformation journey.Forbes. Web.
Hughes, K. (2019). The Agile manifesto, explained. ProjectManager. Web.
Smart, J. (2018). Insights: Jonathan Smart. Barclays. Web.