An Agile Coach on Optimizing Deal Teams
Jim Calko is an Agile Coach and Principal Consultant at the Gunter Group, a Portland-based management consulting firm. If you want to read more about the idea of incorporating Agile concepts in to deal teams, see my article on this.
How loosely can you apply Agile and still have it achieve its purpose?
Very! Agile is really a philosophy or mindset for a team to iteratively work to achieve their goals and learn so they can improve their product/ service or processes along the way. In its most basic form, agile can achieve its purpose when teams Plan, Do, Check, and Adjust as they work to their delivery goals, which is the most important success metric.
There are several frameworks such as Scrum, Kanban (among others) that people can use to make the Agile concepts more tangible. However, in my opinion, its more important to be agile, not just do agile, meaning there are many ways to apply the process, given that individual and collective mindset.
From what I’ve told you about investment banking, how do you see this being a useful concept?
Absolutely, here are a few reasons why:
Improved efficiencies. By creating tighter feedback loops, the team can quickly pivot as things change.
Build shared understanding. This seems especially critical given the complexity of the work and how high the stakes are. Everyone needs to have a clear understanding of the goal and the overall situation.
Builds trust across the team. While the first two bullets speak to developing professional competence, however, trust is actively being cultivated. When people are working closely together they are learning each other’s strengths, their communication and leadership styles. They’re learning how they handle conflict, want to receive and give feedback, etc…
What is a good place to start for someone who wants to incorporate this in to their team but doesn’t intend to become an Agile expert?
I think the first step is to start small, either on a particular deliverable or with a small team. From there, align on the objective/ goal and align on ways of working, and meeting cadence in order to achieve that goal. This helps the team learn together, but allow the successful delivery provide momentum to either scale or adopt agile ways of working to other parts of the business.