Why You Need to Unify Agile Methodologies among Teams
The modern workforce looks quite different than before. Where workers were once tethered to their desks and computer towers, they are now seeking more remote work opportunities using mobile devices. Organizations must provide their employees with the tools and policies necessary to keep everyone on the same page, no matter what device they're utilizing or where they're working from.
For application development and deployment, teams are beginning to expect similar flexibility with their work options. Whether it's a small team with remote workers or a large team separated across business locations, it's critical to enforce the same procedures across the board. Organizations need to unify their agile methodologies among their teams for a few key reasons.
1. Consistency
In many ways, agile product development has made a lot of progress over legacy approaches, but it is still a complicated effort in many ways. Agile has a number of subsets like continuous everything, DevOps, and lean, but not every team needs all of these initiatives within their strategy. Organizations will tailor their agile plan to suit their development and testing advancement. However, if the policy isn't communicated effectively, it can lead to inconsistent workflows, unaligned schedules, and other issues.
Teams must devise a singular document detailing their agile strategy and should train all of their members to work under these guidelines. InformationWeek's Curtis Franklin Jr. noted that even determining whether Scrum or Kanban will be utilized is a critical decision. This will demonstrate what is expected and create a sense of consistency across the board. When everyone completes processes the same way, work can flow smoothly, and teams can rest easy that projects are progressing as expected.
2. More Autonomy
Agile places emphasis on teams being able to govern and think for themselves. This entails making decisions that will benefit the team as well as bring value to the business overall. However, if teams don't have a unified agile methodology, more micromanagement will be required. Teams would have little power within this environment and may feel reminiscent of legacy development processes.
By establishing a single agile strategy across the board, teams will have the guidelines necessary to work as a unit that can govern itself. Atlassian noted that teams will likely go through four stages of group development, where roles are established, relationships are formed, and they are ultimately able to run well with little oversight. In this type of situation, teams are more empowered to focus on being strategic and perform well, ultimately leading to better projects and agile initiatives.
3. Better Results
Agile promises to bring a number of significant benefits to development teams, but it's only possible if teams establish a unified methodology. For example, teams can use test management tools, but if they aren't using it in the same way, they may not get the same results. Organizations must determine how best to use agile tools to deliver on all of the potential advantages that the approach can offer. When teams have set up a unified agile methodology, teams can significantly improve their capabilities.
Agile software development is a complex initiative to undertake, especially when a dispersed team is involved. Organizations must establish a unified agile methodology to ensure that everyone is on the same page and understands what is expected of them in these efforts. By creating such a strategy, teams will be able to be more autonomous, be more consistent, and achieve better results.
