Agile Project Organization

How can digital technology be used as a lever to increase profitability?

From a corporate perspective, digital technology is an important lever to increase efficiency within the organization. Now that the initial step of digitizing processes often is completed, it is now a matter of improving these processes with user-friendly tools and thus realizing real savings in the organization. The key is to improve usability and user experience (UX) to simplify and accelerate the use of technology. In everyday life, technology used within the company must also stand up to comparison with privately used software and apps. Especially for suppliers of commodity products, cost savings through improved UX internal tools is an important lever for profitability.
From the external perspective, digital technology is the central lever for creating value for the customer and one of the most important points of differentiation. The areas of application vary from easily accessible customer contact points to fully integrated digital sales solutions, customer data-based product development and simulations in digital business models. For companies that build on a differentiation strategy, this is the lever to increase sales and profitability.

Agile teams as the key to a successful implementation of digital technology

In consequence, this new role of digital technology requires a corresponding approach to initially make it available and to consistently and permanently develop it further based on the needs of the user. Development in agile teams is the key to success. The heterogeneous composition of the teams, consisting of employees with a business focus and employees with an IT focus, enables rapid but well thought-out decision-making. At the same time, the structures and rule meetings of the agile approach ensure regular coordination in short cycles, thus enabling hypotheses to be tested and validated quickly during development. The outcome is better results in less time. Combined with an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) approach, an agile team can achieve a time-to-market of a few weeks and thus bring new products or functions into the organization at low cost risk. The product is therefore developed step by step. This approach greatly reduces the risk of sunk costs and ensures that exactly those functions are developed that are required in the organization.

How does the transformation to agile teams succeed? Focus: innovation culture and organizational structure

The implementation of the transformation to agile teams requires a step-by-step approach, in the true agile sense. The focus lies on the innovation culture and organizational structure.

The agile way of working promotes a culture of innovation and at the same time requires a cross-functional organization without competence silos in which digital technology is valued as an important value contribution. This is accompanied by various cultural aspects that can also be found in the New Work movement. These are for example self-organized heterogeneous teams and transparency. The heterogeneity of the team members combined with the transparent handling of information creates the opportunity to react quickly to new findings and customer needs. This also includes an open error culture in which the newly gained knowledge is valued. Adaptability to new circumstances is therefore even more important and requires a different type of governance - not least through the application of the MVP approach.

In an MVP approach, the end result of the project is fixed as a vision, but not as a detailed technical concept. The scope of the project is therefore variable and arises from the results of the iterative development steps. However, this does not mean that the costs are "out of control", because time and resources are fixed in contrast to the scope. The risk of unplanned costs is therefore very low. The scope is developed step by step through an iterative approach while the project team continuously tests small hypotheses. The advantage: Through the iterative approach and the abandonment of a fixed project scope, the team develops only those functions that the user really needs, thus enabling a lean and cost-effective product. Through close coordination with the customer and regular small tests, the team gradually optimizes the user experience.

With regard to the organizational structure, heterogeneous teams are particularly important. This means in particular the building of teams with people from different expertise and experience backgrounds. Thus, existing barriers between business and IT are actively overcome by forming teams based on experience and expertise from both areas. Based on a common vision, the team pursues a common mission to jointly develop the best product for its target group. The teams follow fixed role models, such as the Product Owner, and a fixed sequence of regular agile ceremonies. Only in this way can agility be lived efficiently and at the same time effectively in the organization. After all, working successfully in an agile manner also means following a strict structure.

Agility is not a silver bullet

Agile teams are particularly effective in development situations. Development situations in which new products are to be built or optimized for the user are the ideal environment for agile teams. This is particularly due to the ability of the teams to react quickly to changing situations. Since the development of today's digital tools is never finished, agile teams are particularly suitable for the initial and ongoing (further) development of software both for internal use within the company and in contact with the customer. Specific fields of application are, for example:

• You introduce cloud software
• You optimize the UX your internal tools
• You develop digital business models or improve your digital channels for customer communication and sales

Agile teams enable us to work close to the customer and to quickly identify potential for improvement and implement it just as quickly. As a result, time and money is saved and solutions are developed that better fit the needs of the user

4C consulting approach

We support you in the agile transformation from the beginning and answer the question which organizational structure is the right one for your teams. To this end, we determine the vision of your agile transformation together with you. Based on this, we determine your strategic goals, primary factors influencing the value creation of your company and determine the strategic use cases for implementation. These provide the basis for the definition of agile teams, which we tailor to the individual use cases based on the required experience and skills and are composed of cross-divisional specialists from business and IT.
We also support you in planning the rollout and the gradual introduction of agile teams in your organization. At the same time, we work with you to develop a new governance structure that fully meets the requirements of agile teams and your individual organization. Of course we also accompany you in iterative steps during the introduction of agile teams in your organization - because agile transformation should also be agile: In small steps and with a strict process.
If you would like to know more about agile transformation, please contact us and download our competence brochure below. We‘re looking forward to the discussions with you.