Manifesto Developing Agile Organisations

Developing Agile
Organisations
How to innovate faster, create value
quicker and delight customers sooner
1
Contents
Introduction 3
Evolving ways of working 4
Taking the remote approach 5
How this guide can help 5
The Agile approach to product development 6
Keeping up the momentum 7
Adjusting to a changing norm 8
How Agile works 8
Agile in (and out of) a pandemic 9
Enhancing ROI 10
The origins and principles of Agile strategies 11
The 12 Principles of Agile Software Development 12
Applying Agile methodology 13
Case Study: Agile Coaching with Manifesto 14
Key concepts in Agile product development 15
The minimum viable product 16
Continuous improvements 17
Kanban, Scrum and XP 18
Agile workshops 19
Innovation labs and in-house startups 20
Case Study: Trend workshops with Prostate Cancer UK 21
Agile tools and resources 22
Vision board 23
The backlog 24
Personas 25
Case Study: Discovering new personas with Unicef UK 27
The task board 28
Stand-ups and retrospectives 29
Organisational agility 30
Key takeaways 31

2
Developing Agile Organisations
Introduction
As the emergence of new technologies continue to Read more:

send ripples through our society, disrupting how we Ericsson blog: How has the
communicate, consume, transact and work, organisations pandemic’s impact influenced
unable to react and innovate risk being left behind. our digital habits?
In a post-pandemic world, where consumer expectations have

drastically shifted, digital interactions over in-person experiences
have become more favoured. An Ericsson report comparing the end
of 2019 and 2020 found “productivity, overall consumption, and core
communication” all experienced surges in online usage – both in terms
of time spent, and number of users.
This shift in behaviour has also driven the popularity of certain

technologies. One is the resurgence of QR codes, now used to check-in
to venues and download web pages. Another is the increased use of
digital wallet-friendly mobile apps inside pubs and restaurants as a
means to order and pay.
3
Evolving ways of working

This new digital-first, post-pandemic landscape and changing consumer
expectations means the way we work also has to evolve. That’s why
working models inherited from a pre-digital world, which are rigidly
plan-driven and insist on sequential processes of analysis, research,
design and implementation, are struggling to keep up.
In contrast, businesses fit for the future are engaged in a continuous

process of transformation. They are removing barriers to change.
They are reducing the time it takes to get from how to create value
for customers and the business, to the products, services or ways of
working that realise that value. They are putting their organisations on
a new footing which allows them to react to changing internal factors,
industry trends, and the actions of new and existing competitors.
Agility is key to successful digital transformation. Agile ways of working

focus on people, not processes. They free individuals to collaborate
together in small, multi-disciplinary, self-organising teams, generating
insights about how to create value and getting new products and
campaigns to market quickly so they can be tested, evaluated and
improved upon.
4
Taking the remote approach

We’ve seen a whole host of approaches to remote working, a setting
proven to promote agile methodologies.1 In May 2021, UK startup
GoCardless introduced a 90-day “work away” policy, 2 which allows
employees to work abroad for up to three months each year. A month
earlier, Revolut had introduced a similar policy for 60 days of the year.3
In December 2020, London-based firm Currencycloud invested £1.5

million into a remote-first working approach post-pandemic.4 But
e-commerce giant Shopify went even further back in May 2020,
announcing it was a “digital-by-default”5 company. This saw the
majority of its employees transferred to remote working on a
permanent basis.
According to the latest ‘State of Agile Report’, published in July Link:

2021, 56% of respondents favour a hybrid approach, returning to the 15th State of Agile Report
office regularly but not daily. 25% expect to remain fully remote in a
post-Covid world. So whilst the Agile Manifesto favours face to face Read more:
interaction between the team and product owner, people still benefit The Agile Manifesto
from Agile ways of working in a remote world.
How this guide can help

This guide explores the principles which underpin Agile methodologies.
It was updated in 2021 to reflect the changes organisations have faced
throughout the pandemic.
It discusses the benefits of agile working, comparing them with more

traditional approaches. And it introduces important concepts from
Agile which can be used in any size or type of organisation to achieve
startup-style innovation, and to react more successfully to a rapidly
changing world.
1
Revisiting agile teams after an abrupt shift to remote, McKinsey & Company, 2020
2
GoCardless announces 90-day ‘Work Away’ policy, TechRound, 2021
3
Revolut staff can work abroad for two months a year, Employee Benefits, 2021 5
4
Currencycloud embraces ‘remote-first’ work, Finextra, 2020
5
What Does Working Remotely Mean for the Planet?, Shopify, 2020
The Agile
approach to product
development
Ever since the switch to digital from 19th century analog
processes such as punched cards and tabulating machines
began, businesses have been looking to exploit the benefits
of digital technology.
The automation of rules-based tasks, enhanced connectivity, mobile

technology and rapidly increasing computing power have all allowed
businesses to cut their staffing costs or free people for knowledge work,
while providing innovative new products and services to customers.
But the ever-rising technological tide doesn’t lift all boats, as the
fates of once-great corporations like Kodak and Woolworths indicate.
Both lost their industry-leader status because they failed to introduce
sufficiently good digital alternatives to their traditional offerings. In the
hyper-competitive world of business, if you don’t innovate the product
or service your customers need, your competitors will.
6
Keeping up the momentum

Innovating in a pandemic wasn’t easy for the majority of organisations,
but the pressure meant many firms innovated at breakneck speed. “I
think we can all agree that COVID-19 was a great accelerator for digital
transformation, putting software front and center stage,” venture
capital founder Ann Winblad said on a panel reported by Forbes.6
Online marketplaces and delivery services became integral parts of

our lives, driving a nationwide dependency on software. This has, in
turn, poked more digitally sluggish sectors to get innovating in order
to match customer expectations which are increasingly favouring slick
online experiences.
But we’re also living in an age where organisations don’t stop at

contained, static innovations. This means that as we emerge out of the
global health crisis, firms must continue their momentum around an
appetite for change.
Take Spotify, for example. Renowned for iterating everything it

innovates, the music streaming service has long been used as a
benchmark7 for how Agile workflows can work at scale.
Parallells can be drawn to the ‘Red Queen Effect’ in evolutionary

biology, which dictates that organisms competing against ever-evolving
opposing organisms in a changing environment, must constantly evolve
just to survive.
Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you

can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to
get somewhere else, you must run at least twice
as fast as that!
The Red Queen, Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll (1871)
7
6
The Great Acceleration: Innovation And Entrepreneurship During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Forbes, 2021
7
Discover the Spotify model, Atlassian Agile Coach
Adjusting to a changing norm

Traditional methods of building products or services involve following
a linear series of project phases: from assessing feasibility, to design,
to build, to support. Each phase is usually handled by a separate team
of specialists.
This process can last years. During this time, competitors release
alternatives and user behaviour changes. By the time the product or
service is finally ready to meet the customer, it might no longer be fit
for purpose and require significant, costly redevelopment.8 Meanwhile,
the customer is left empty handed.
In the pandemic, it was essential for organisations to remain proactive,

rather than reactive, as one lockdown became multiple not just for
the UK, but for the entire world.9 As a Forbes article from July 2020
put it, companies need to accept “the current situation is no longer
exceptional, no longer simply a response to a one-off emergency, but
part of the way we are going to be living for a long time”.10
How Agile works

Agile methods attempt to solve this problem by redesigning the product
development cycle so that a working version of the product is released
as quickly as possible, with improvements and additional features
following in subsequent updates. This way of working can be applied to
most things, not just product development.
By empowering cross-functional teams to self-organise, this approach

ditches the traditional hierarchy of project phases so that the
gathering of requirements can take place simultaneously with
product development.
8
8
Examining the Agile Cost of Change Curve, Agile Modeling
9
Lockdowns compared: tracking governments’ coronavirus responses, FT, 2021
10
Proactive Vs. Reactive Companies And Distributed Work: Ten Fundamental Points, Forbes, 2020
Agile in (and out of) a pandemic

Regardless of the socio-economic climate, Agile methodologies have a
whole array of benefits for organisations which implement them.
• Agile teams get products, services and campaigns to market quicker,

helping you realise the benefits sooner and reduce the risk of long
development cycles.
hey also shorten the feedback cycle between the end-user and the
•T
team, helping you adapt to the changing needs of the user.
hey help build robust teams of multi-skilled individuals whose

•T
areas of knowledge expand far beyond their core disciplines.
•A
nd, because the impact of a released product is much easier to
gauge than that of a product still in development, they improve the
visibility of project success.
In the pandemic, Agile has presented a host of additional benefits.

According to Consultancy.uk research,11 7 in 10 businesses said in March
2021 that agile organisational practices helped them to adapt quicker.
And more than 60% of Agile firms said they managed to preserve their
pre-crisis performance between March 2020 and March 2021.
7/10
7 in 10 businesses said
in March 2021 that agile
organisational practices
helped them to adapt quicker.
9
11
Agile work helps firms successfully adapt to pandemic business, Consultancy.uk, 2021
Enhancing ROI
ROI in software projects

Plan-driven vs. Agile – more or less risk?
Plan-driven
Agile
£ ROI
Release 1 Release 2 Release 3
Time
Go live
10
The origins and principles

of Agile strategies
By the turn of the century, a large number of software Read more:
developers had realised that the traditional method of Manifesto for Agile
making products, often referred to as the waterfall Software Development
method, was unfit for the digital age.
Heavily influenced by Lean production philosophy,12 which derives from

manufacturing techniques pioneered by automakers like Toyota in the
post-war period, the method emphasised maximising customer value
while minimising waste. The developers behind this approach had
been devising their own lightweight, incremental methods for building
software for some time. But it wasn’t until 2001, when 17 proponents
of these lightweight methods met at a conference in Utah, that the
principles of Agile software development were codified.
Along with the 12 principles of Agile Software Development that

accompany it, this short statement has revolutionised the
software industry.
Manifesto for Agile Software Development
We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
11
12
Lean Manufacturing, The Lean Six Sigma Company
The 12 Principles of Agile

Software Development
01 Our highest priority is to satisfy

the customer through early
and continuous delivery of
07 Working software is
the primary measure
of progress.
valuable software.
02 Welcome changing requirements,

even late in development.
Agile processes harness
08 Agile processes promote
sustainable development.
The sponsors, developers, and
change for the customer’s users should be able to maintain
competitive advantage. a constant pace indefinitely.
03 Deliver working software

frequently, from a couple of weeks
to a couple of months, with a
09 Continuous attention to
technical excellence and
good design enhances agility.
preference to the shorter timescale.
04 Business people and developers

must work together daily
throughout the project.
10 Simplicity – the art of
maximizing the amount of work
not done – is essential.
05 Build projects around motivated

individuals. Give them the
environment and support they
11 The best architectures,
requirements, and
designs emerge from
need, and trust them to get the self-organising teams.
job done.
06 The most efficient and effective

method of conveying information to
and within a development team is
12 At regular intervals, the team
reflects on how to become more
effective, then tunes and adjusts
face-to-face conversation. its behaviour accordingly.
12
Applying Agile methodology

Agile focuses on working with the customer to give them as much value
as possible, as quickly as possible.
The original product or service is then enhanced through subsequent

iterations with features that provide even more value with each new
release. As customer behaviours and preferences change, the Agile
business will know about it sooner and will be able to react more quickly.
As more and more products and services have become digital, the Agile
values have also heavily influenced project management techniques
more widely.
For example, the Agile Marketing Manifesto rewrites the Agile

values for marketers as:
• Validated learning over opinions and conventions
• Adaptive and iterative campaigns over Big Bang campaigns
• Customer-focused collaboration over silos and hierarchies
• Responding to change over following a plan
Again, the focus is on shortening the feedback cycle between customer

and marketer, so that the team can more quickly work out how to create
value for their audiences. Initial, experimental campaigns bring in vital
data on which further iterations can be based. The team is now focused
on actual customer behaviour, rather than the idealised version that
gets discussed in a meeting room.
In fact, when tweaked appropriately, the Agile principles can be

applied to almost any discipline, from marketing and communications
to customer service and even finance. By working iteratively,
focusing on value, and building real world experience back into the
cycle, Agile approaches produce successful products, services and
campaigns without necessarily knowing exactly what they will look
like at the outset.
13
Case Study
Agile Coaching with Manifesto Read more:

Bespoke Agile training
Here at Manifesto, we offer bespoke Agile training for your organisation
for organisations, which range from consultancy,
to facilitation and the coaching itself. Having built
our own team on Agile foundations, we’ve already
collected a whole spectrum of insights into best
practices. Namely, ones which position Agile at the I just wanted to say a huge
heart of your operations.
thanks for the opportunity
Our leadership team, as well as our certified Scrum
of joining this event (and
Masters, regularly host introduction sessions to to Paul for hosting in such
Agile working, as well as more bespoke programmes. an engaging way). I found
Attendees include a variety of organisations, such as it really helpful and the
Vodafone, Barclays, Cancer Research UK, The Health breakout sessions really
Foundation and The University of Edinburgh. brought the ‘theory’ to life.
Buzzing with ideas for the
We start by establishing a clear, overarching goal team now.
distilled from your organisational requirements
and goals, before progressing into the Agile
Blood Cancer UK
transformation itself.
14
Key concepts in Agile

product development
The principles of Agile are intended to unleash the creative
power of small, cross-functional teams so they can deliver
more value, sooner. But how do the principles translate into
actual working practices?
The answer varies from organisation to organisation, from team to

team, leading to a large range of choices when it comes to selecting
from Agile methods. In this chapter we’ll look at a few concepts and
frameworks that have been utilised to put Agile principles into practice.
15
The minimum viable product

Attempting to release the perfect version of a product before it’s even
been established that a market exists, or that users will respond to the
product in the ways predicted, can lead to costly mistakes.
A Minimum Viable Product, or MVP, avoids this risk by offering the

minimum functionality required to satisfy the user and test the
assumptions of the product team.
The minimum viable product starts with a product vision. This is a
M Minimum
high-level statement which encapsulates the early assumptions of
the product team about who the users are, what they need, the
features of the product that will meet those needs and the benefits
to the business. The product vision can develop and evolve over the
product lifecycle as these assumptions are validated or invalidated
V Viable
by real-world data.
P Product
Sometimes the idea of an MVP can make stakeholders uncomfortable
and so it might be better to think in terms of an MMP, or Minimum
Marketable Product, which reframes the question as ‘what’s the
minimum set of features you’d be happy to take to market?’
16
Continuous improvements
Agile strategies constantly seek to introduce positive change at every
opportunity. They look to continually improve products, services and
campaigns, as well as ways of working.
In this respect, Agile is influenced by the approach known as ‘kaizen’,

which rests on the three pillars of feedback, efficiency and evolution.
A core feature of Agile methods is regularly taking the time, as a team,

to reflect on ways of working, so that inefficient practices can be
identified and eliminated.
Research
Optimise Analyse
Feedback Implement
17
Kanban, Scrum and XP

Since the publication of the Agile Manifesto, many frameworks have
sprung up which offer a template for Agile working, through tools,
processes or rituals. Kanban, Scrum and XP are three common ones.
Kanban, which came about as part of the Toyota Production

System, relies on breaking up tasks into small, discrete items,
visualising workflow via a task board, and limiting the amount of
work in progress.
Proponents of XP, short for eXtreme Programming, work in very

short cycles with a set of engineering solutions which deliver
continuously improving, high quality code. The techniques
established in XP are often used alongside other methodologies,
such as pair programming.
Scrum, common at large organisations with lots of software

developers, prescribes a number of ritual meetings to keep
communication between team members, and between the team
and the business, fluid and efficient.
Work is organised into sprints which commonly last two – four weeks,
with planning and estimation sessions up front, demos of the working
software and team retrospectives at the end, and daily stand-up
meetings throughout.
Specialised team member roles include the ScrumMaster, who

facilitates the meetings and keeps the team moving forward, and
Product Owner, who represents the customer in the team and makes
important decisions about which features to prioritise.
While different frameworks are appropriate to different scenarios, in

reality most Agile teams use a mixture of tools, processes and methods
from various frameworks.
18
Agile workshops
Manifesto runs a regular ‘Intro

to Agile’ workshop which covers
the role of the ScrumMaster and
everything it entails.
The team also hosts a ‘Product Owner’ workshop, Link:
specially designed to unpick the requirements Sign up here
around owning a product development journey from
start to finish.
It’s free to sign up to the latest sessions, which

involve a mixture of presentation, workshop
exercises and discussion, with a Q&A to finish up.
Free remote workshop
Gareth Ellis-Thomas
Director of Technology at
Prostate Cancer UK
19
Innovation labs and in-house startups

Introducing these kinds of changes to working practices required to
successfully implement Agile is often difficult in large organisations,
where ways of doing things have become entrenched over many years.
To get around this problem of cultural resistance, some companies

have taken an agile approach to going Agile, by starting with
small experiments.
Small teams are specially selected to form ‘innovation labs’ or in-house

startups. While these employees might sit in the same physical location
as their colleagues, they are in other respects separate, playing by their
own Agile rules to quickly deliver value to the customer and business
through products, services or campaigns.
When successful, these teams become standard bearers throughout the

organisation, demonstrating the benefits of Agile ways of working and
helping overcome barriers to change.
20
Case Study
Trend workshops with

Prostate Cancer UK
Prostate Cancer UK, a charity which raises funding Link:
for research to create a future where lives are not View case study
limited by prostate cancer, ran a series of workshops
with Manifesto at the tailend of the pandemic in
order to pre-empt market trends following a return
to ‘normal’.
Facilitated and guided by Manifesto, the charity The combination of

divided its sessions into six stages. These stages, lightning talks and then
followed methodically, resulted in a prioritisation the observations were a
guide for the organisation. In other words, they great way to get us into
showed Prostate Cancer UK what it needed to do, thinking outside our own
and in what order. four walls. It would have
been much harder for one
of us to bring that outside
perspective in.
Gareth Ellis-Thomas
Director of Technology at
Prostate Cancer UK
21
Agile tools
and resources
Agile teams use a wide array of tools to aid collaboration and
help build a shared understanding of how to create value for the
business and the end user. Here are a few we use extensively.
The backlog
Vision board
Personas
The task bo
ard
Stand-ups and
retrospectives
22
Vision board
For a team to succeed, its members need to have a shared
understanding of what they’re setting out to do, and why.
The product vision board helps to achieve this shared understanding.
Using the ‘value’ column of your board, you can draw links between the
needs of your users and how solving these needs through a specific
feature will generate value back into your organisation. If you make
your users life easier and fill it with optionality, your annual sales
figures will likely reflect this.
The idea is to bring together all those with insight to contribute and
then work together to fill it in. Because it’s such a simple tool, it’s easy
to adapt the product vision board for services, campaigns and other
kinds of projects.
VISION STATEMENT
Create a refreshing beverage that
everyone can enjoy on holiday
TARGET GROUP NEEDS FEATURES VALUE

Thirsty people Refreshment Water Quenches thirst
Fashionable people Flavour Glass Tastes zingy
To look good Lemon Looks good
Umbrella
23
The backlog
In simplest terms the product backlog is a to-do list for the team. For
software development this will be an ordered list of the product’s
features, but any kind of project can benefit from breaking tasks down
into small, discrete items.
In Scrum, the most common kind of backlog item is a user story, which
describes a task in terms of the value it provides to the end-user, e.g. “as a
customer I want to be informed of the company’s latest offers by email”.
Choosing which tasks to take on and how to slice them up is a critical

factor in the success of any project. Agile methods prescribe tasks which
take a vertical slice through the product, service or campaign.
In other words, tasks which deliver value to the end-user independently,

and which don’t rely on other tasks being completed to do so.
This ensures that each new iteration of the project delivers the
most possible value.
PRODUCT BACKLOG SPRINT BACKLOG
Story Task Task Task Task
Story Task Task Task Task Working

Software
Story Task Task Task Task
FEATURE
Epic
Story
Epic
24
The INVEST acronym, created by Bill Wake, provides a handy reminder

that tasks in an Agile project should be:
I INDEPENDENT (of all others)
N NEGOTIABLE (not a specific contract for features)
V VALUABLE (or vertical)
E ESTIMABLE (to a good approximation)
S SMALL (so as to fit within a single iteration)
T TESTABLE (in principle, even if there isn’t a test for it yet)
A backlog item should represent a slice through the system, and deliver
a piece of functionality that works end to end.
25
Personas
To understand how to create value for your end-users, you need
to gain a solid understanding of their needs, pain-points,
expectations and behaviours.
Personas are fictional characters which are ideally based on real

user research, (where user research is not available, we call them
‘Proto Personas’). They act as stand-ins for types of user, customer or
audience member in internal conversations about the product, service
or campaign.
They’re a useful shorthand and a place to collect your assumptions

about a particular type of user, while being mindful that those
assumptions are subject to testing in real-world environments and
might need to be updated.
THE THIRSTY PERSON GOALS

Refreshment
Ineeda Drank
Quantity
BEHAVIOURS
Prefers not to touch the glass
FEATURES
Water
Eco straw
26
Case Study
Discovering new personas with

Unicef UK
Through audience surveys and face-to-face Link:
interviews, Manifesto gathered insights to redesign Unicef
Unicef UK’s website with a focus on the charity’s
donor personas. The team combined this extensive
audience research with strategic reviews of the Read more:
existing website, content and organisation.
Full case study
Out of this process, Manifesto produced a series of
new user personas for the charity, alongside new
user journeys, content strategies and information
architectures to meet the specific needs of Unicef
UK’s users.
Following the website launch, conversion rates

among website visitors more than doubled, with
cash donations increasing by 55% per visitor.
27
The task board

It’s much easier for Agile teams to self-organise when their workflow
is visualised. A task board, common in Scrum, Kanban, and hybrid
variations of those Agile frameworks, displays all of a team’s current
work organised by theme (or feature in software development) and
status (e.g. to do, doing, done). It provides an at-a-glance picture of
work in progress and helps team members coordinate their input
into tasks.
Digital versions (e.g. JIRA boards) offer lots of functionality and are
useful for distributed teams, but it’s also nice to have a physical version
around which the team can gather to gauge and discuss their progress
in an office environment.
STORIES NOT STARTED IN PROGRESS DONE
Task A
Task B
Story #1
Task C
Story #2 Task A Task C Task B
Task D Task A
Story #3 Task B Task C
28
Stand-ups and retrospectives

Continuous improvement means constantly reviewing progress and
performance, with a view to making work more efficient and delivering
more value.
This needs to happen at the level of the work being done and at the
level of how the team works together over the long-term. For the
former, there are daily stand-ups – where each team member tells the
group what they’ve been working on, what they’re about to work on and
any impediments to the progress.
For the latter, regular retrospectives at the end of projects or project

phases (e.g. sprints) are an opportunity for the team to analyse their
performance, discuss their working practices, and work together to find
more efficient ways to do things.
We made
a drink!
The eco straw Estimation
fell out :( was way out
Great
collaboration
on umbrella
placement
Too many
emails
Good
communication
29
Organisational agility
Whilst it’s one thing to study the points of Agile methodology, it’s
quite another to put them into practice. This is why it’s important to
zoom out, adopting a broader, macro-level view in order to manage
your teams.
A great place to start is to look at where colleagues become harder, or

less efficient, to work with. The World War Two CIA guide to sabotage
offers some good examples. One cites a colleague which multiplies the
number of procedures and clearances involved in projects. Another
cites a team member who dominates meetings with unnecessarily
lengthy ‘speeches’, which hinder productivity.
But it doesn’t stop at character traits. Organisational tensions can

also present huge strains when it comes to delivering projects at pace.
Limited resources, excessive layers of bureaucracy, and outdated
technology all have a hand in sabotaging your Agile methodologies too.
By taking note of any tensions which affect your organisation, be them

from your team, or from how your company is structured, you can begin
to unpick the bottlenecks preventing you from being a truly agile body.
Here are some helpful ways you can then solve some
of these tensions:
• Clarify how and where decisions are taken
• Take turns to speak to give an equal share of voice
• Recognise and celebrate noble failure
• Craft clear and compelling visions – for organisations, teams,

products, projects, campaigns etc
• Start distributing authority to the edge of the organisation
• Consider long-term value – a 50 year vision?
30
Key takeaways
It is clear that technology has transformed the world. By continually

transforming the behaviour and expectations of consumers, products
and services must also change. On the next page are some key
takeaways on how to adapt to this persistently shifting landscape.
As difficult as these first steps may seem, the rewards for organisations
who undergo a successful digital transformation, powered by Agile
ways of working, are worth fighting for. Continuous innovation gives
teams the ability to shape the future of their own industries.
To discover how your organisation can better serve the

needs of customers while reducing risk and generating
more value, more quickly, contact Manifesto.
Contact us:
hello@manifesto.co.uk
manifesto.co.uk
31
Key takeaways
• Attempts at innovation which rely on • Gather real-world feedback to improve

lots of up-front planning and long the product, service or campaign
development cycles risk delivering no through new iterations. By keeping this
value. They not only increase the time it feedback cycle short, Agile methods
takes to generate a return on investment, reduce the cost of errors and greatly
but greatly increase the risk that initial improve the ability of the team to react
assumptions will no longer be valid by to changing customer needs.
the time a product, service or campaign
makes contact with the customer. That’s • One shoe doesn’t fit all. Many Agile
not to say that some types of lengthy frameworks and approaches exist,
and risky innovation aren’t important. which provide a large and varied toolkit
For major breakthroughs in science and for organisations looking to devise
technology, they’re a necessity. But in an and implement Agile digital strategies.
organisational context, creating value Common to all these approaches is
early and often is key. an emphasis on removing barriers to
information exchange between the team
• Digital transformation efforts are geared and their end-users, between the team
towards helping organisations respond to and the business, and between team
change. By innovating faster, organisations members themselves.
can unlock the value which results from
business insights more quickly. Agile ways • Promote self-management, creativity,
of working accelerate this process by time to reflect, regular knowledge sharing
releasing people from slavishly following and continuous learning. This will create
a fixed plan. highly motivated, high-performing teams.
This cultural shift can be difficult to
•A
dopt an incremental approach to achieve in large organisations which have
delivering value. This helps teams embrace become rigid in their ways of working. This
change and focus on delivering as much requires a strong vision from leadership
value, both for the end-user and for the and a willingness to experiment – through
organisation, as early as possible. innovation labs or in-house startups first,
if necessary.
32
Manifesto
Manifesto is a leading specialist in all aspects
of experience and transformation, working with
purpose-driven organisations to increase their
impact and drive positive change.
We understand that transformative strategies rely

on exceptional delivery. That’s why our broader and
deeper expertise guides organisations through the
entire change journey.
manifesto.co.uk
hello@manifesto.co.uk 33

Manifesto Developing Agile Organisations

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Developing Agile

As the emergence of new technologies continue to Read more:

In a post-pandemic world, where consumer expectations have

This shift in behaviour has also driven the popularity of certain

Evolving ways of working

In contrast, businesses fit for the future are engaged in a continuous

Agility is key to successful digital transformation. Agile ways of working

Taking the remote approach

In December 2020, London-based firm Currencycloud invested £1.5

According to the latest ‘State of Agile Report’, published in July Link:

How this guide can help

It discusses the benefits of agile working, comparing them with more

The automation of rules-based tasks, enhanced connectivity, mobile

Keeping up the momentum

Online marketplaces and delivery services became integral parts of

But we’re also living in an age where organisations don’t stop at

Take Spotify, for example. Renowned for iterating everything it

Parallells can be drawn to the ‘Red Queen Effect’ in evolutionary

Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you

Adjusting to a changing norm

In the pandemic, it was essential for organisations to remain proactive,

How Agile works

By empowering cross-functional teams to self-organise, this approach

Agile in (and out of) a pandemic

• Agile teams get products, services and campaigns to market quicker,

 hey help build robust teams of multi-skilled individuals whose

In the pandemic, Agile has presented a host of additional benefits.

ROI in software projects

Release 1 Release 2 Release 3

The origins and principles

method, was unfit for the digital age.

Heavily influenced by Lean production philosophy,12 which derives from

Along with the 12 principles of Agile Software Development that

Manifesto for Agile Software Development

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

The 12 Principles of Agile

01 Our highest priority is to satisfy

02 Welcome changing requirements,

03 Deliver working software

04 Business people and developers

05 Build projects around motivated

06 The most efficient and effective

Applying Agile methodology

The original product or service is then enhanced through subsequent

For example, the Agile Marketing Manifesto rewrites the Agile

• Validated learning over opinions and conventions

• Adaptive and iterative campaigns over Big Bang campaigns

• Customer-focused collaboration over silos and hierarchies

• Responding to change over following a plan

Again, the focus is on shortening the feedback cycle between customer

In fact, when tweaked appropriately, the Agile principles can be

Agile Coaching with Manifesto Read more:

Key concepts in Agile

The answer varies from organisation to organisation, from team to

The minimum viable product

• Agile teams get products, services and campaigns to market quicker,

hey help build robust teams of multi-skilled individuals whose

• Craft clear and compelling visions – for organisations, teams,

• Attempts at innovation which rely on • Gather real-world feedback to improve