Agile is the new bright shiny object in business and increasing numbers of companies are jumping on the agile bandwagon. Based on new ways of working guided by the Agile Manifesto and authored by Jeff Sutherland, the hype is not without justification. Agile delivers results that are hard to argue—increasing velocity and output while reducing development time and increasing customer satisfaction.
Because a fundamental tenet of agile is putting people over processes, HR systems are key to agile success. Whether you’re an HR professional contributing to your organization’s strategy or a leader shaping expectations for your internal HR partners, these are ways HR can help agile succeed:
Inspire New Thinking
HR professionals increasingly have a “seat at the table” and a strategic role in the business. Part of this role should be to provoke new thinking and make some waves—in a good way. HR can contribute to success with agile by staying aware of context and trends, and by bringing new thinking to the organization at all levels. While other functions may stick to their core competencies, a fundamental value of HR can be expanding viewpoints—in terms of policies, practices, talent approaches and especially as it relates to new methodologies like agile.
Start With People
While positive culture and attention to people practices must be the responsibility of every leader and department within an organization, HR has a unique role to play in ensuring organizations put people first. Agile succeeds when people come before process and have primary importance within teams and work approaches. Beyond the obvious role of advocating for people, HR can find ways to empower people and give them more choice and control in their assignments, their development path and even their hours of work.
Foster Team Accountability
Because agile teams work so closely together and manage their tasks with high levels of transparency (think: story cards and Kanban boards), there is nowhere to hide in an agile team. Likewise, the most effective agile teams see colleagues helping each other and adapting constantly to cover workloads, apply team members’ skills and develop individual and team capabilities. HR can support this effort by ensuring performance management systems are based on team performance more than individual performance and feature teams comparing their performance to their own output over time, rather than to that of other teams.
Encourage Celebration And Storytelling
HR groups also can create value by ensuring celebration and storytelling. Accountability and recognition are two sides of the same coin. Recognition can’t occur without accountability and at the same time, plenty of celebration is fuel for motivation and teams who are energized to pursue the next goal. Stories of challenges met, accomplishments achieved and teams succeeding are inspiring to both teams and individuals.
Manage The Talent Stream
HR can also ensure a strong talent pipeline with clear expectations that are set when people join an agile organization—explaining the extent to which the agile groups embrace feedback, transparency and continuous improvement. HR can also help ensure policies aren’t getting in the way of talent flexibility. When roles must flex within an agile team, job descriptions and processes for shifting assignments must be general enough (or fluid enough) to ensure people can go where their skills are most valuable to serving the team and the customer. Even better than ensuring policies aren’t getting in the way, HR can identify new and innovative ways of helping to rotate talent, develop talent and engage talent.
Model The Way
HR teams can also model the way by adopting agile principles themselves. Finding ways to focus work, bring transparency to internal processes, obtain customer feedback more regularly and seek relentless improvement are examples.
Ensure Continuous Learning
Agile is easy to learn and difficult to master, and constant improvement is key. This learning is organic as teams work together and learn together. It should also be supported systematically through programs and processes. HR can ensure robust approaches to onboarding, continuous classroom and on-the-job learning, and mentoring approaches.
Overall, HR can most powerfully support agile by stewarding a culture of transparency, learning, experimentation, and development—in short, a culture that supports people, challenges people, holds people accountable and prioritizes people. All this will contribute to success with agile efforts—not just a bandwagon but a journey toward real results.
