Agile potential analysis: How to fully exploit your agile potential

July 22, 2021 – Reading time: 5 minutes

It has become clear that the introduction and implementation of agility is not always that simple. Companies, individuals and especially the individual teams repeatedly encounter challenges in becoming agile and fully realizing their agile potential.  

This article is about a method we have developed that helps you to overcome the classical barriers of agile implementation and to fully exploit your agile potential.

Do you know what it’s like when you’ve suddenly been told „we need to become more agile“ and you don’t know how to implement agility, how agile you are or which steps you should take first? Or Maybe you have already taken the first steps, but you don’t know if you have reached your goal and why the problems still exist, and the promised benefits are not appearing.

Thanks to the experience and impressions we have gained on numerous customer projects, we at INVENSITY know these difficulties and have experienced a long list of implementation challenges which we have broken down to the typical main points at team level.

The implementation of agility 

• is often applied unilaterally at the process-oriented level. Agility is therefore not fully established. 
• is often implemented without consideration of value creation. It simply follows the trend. 
• is often carried out without the team-specific conditions, which leads to unsuccessful implementation and transition.
• often neglects the required individuals and their competencies due to the pure process approach.

It is exactly these common and well-known challenges in the implementation of agility that the Agile Potential Analysis addresses. Therefore, the potential analysis offers a unique and holistic approach to identifying the „being” and “doing“ agile on team level. 

Initiated by the challenges described above, we have gathered our experience from various industries and companies and through extensive research of internal and external sources over the past years to break down the construct of agility to its essential elements. These elements provide the core of the method and help us to determine the current state of agility and subsequently derive the potential from it. 

We believe that four core competences related to agile cover all essential facets of agility. The behavioral competence refers to the 12 agile principles written down in the agile manifesto and thus represents the cultural side of “being agile”. The change competence completes the cultural side, as it covers and names the essential aspect of continuous adaptation and the readiness to change of agility (4. Value – agile manifesto).  

Figure 1. 4-Core competencies of agility (Illustration: INVENSITY)

The methodological competence on the other side refers to universal agile practices that internalize all agile methods through their generic approach and reflect the process-oriented approach of “Doing Agile”. The last area of subject competence serves as a consolidation of knowledge for process-oriented and cultural agility, since it is assumed that a team or person has knowledge about the subject („agility“) without applying it or applies it without having the corresponding knowledge. Each area was broken down into more detailed sub-areas and corresponding indicators to allow a comprehensive analysis and identification of the existing agility. 

The entire process of agile potential analysis can be divided into 5 steps. Here it is also possible to divide the individual steps into customer-specific and individual work packages, so that you apply exactly what you need.  

In the first step of the potential analysis, the goal and therefore the appropriate target state as well as the current pain points of the team are identified through an initial workshop.  

In the second step, the potential analysis performs the important agility identification with the help of the described competence fields, in order to subsequently initiate the possible measures to fulfill the potential in the third step.

Third step: The existing agility is measured by interviewing the most important stakeholders in the team with the help of selected workshops as well as the developed indicators. The measures for fulfilling the agile potential will then be made available in the form of a report and discussed together.  

In the fourth step, the selected measures are implemented according to their importance in order to exploit the agile potential step by step.  

The last step serves as a follow-up retrospective regarding the team development as well as the reevaluation of the current level of agility.

Figure 2. 4- The path of agile potential analysis (Illustration: INVENSITY)

It offers you and your team the advantages

• to identify your agile potential independent of your process, your level of knowledge or your applied methodology (agile or not) or even your domain.
• to master a guided transition process to the best individual agility level in a short time together with certified agile coaches.

If you currently have any questions related to an agile implementation at team level or are interested in an organization-wide transformation (EnAgile), please feel free to contact us.

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