Session

Agile beyond IT

Do you believe that agility can work in civil engineering, aerospace or [any industry here]? Do you think that as IT expert you should care? 
If your answer is no, you hesitate or cringe, then this talk is for you. I will demonstrate that agility is possible and imperative in all industries. And, that we, as IT professionals, not only can, but also have a responsibility to educate the organisations’ we work with on agility outside of our IT closet.
To help with this I will provide examples of agile adoption across a wide range of industries and will propose a framework on how to move non IT organisations towards agility.
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In recent years, we have seen an interest in other industries to adopt agility (e.g. Agile HR). However, many industries still think that Agile is not for them, or, if it is, then only at basic process level, which frequently translates to nothing more than adoption of Scrum as a method to run team ceremonies.

Reading one consultancy’s approach to Agile in construction they conclude that construction companies must adopt agile, specifically to ensure that the customer is involved in design decisions. No s***. (I cannot express how scary I find that this needs pointing out, and also how immature a stance this is).

So clearly there is a missed opportunity. But where to start?

I will make the point that looking at the IT industry is great, and that we have a lot to share and give: Over its short lifespan the IT industry has made a number of amazing innovations in terms of how people work and how software is delivered. However, one size does not fit all, and other industries cannot just lift and shift from software engineering.

IT took a lot from lean manufacturing, but, we also added to it; we made it work for ‘our’ value chain. So the challenge that other industries will face, if they want to fully benefit from agility, is that they need to change culture and process (which seems obvious) but also tooling (which seems less obvious to many): only the three together will unlock the ability to become truly agile.

I will make the point that, to really introduce agility, a number of industries need to start heavily innovating. And that, if they don’t, they will not be able to master the challenges that the 21st century will throw at them...

To support my claim I will share examples of agile adoption and innovation from construction, civil engineering, automotive, aerospace, medical, biotech, HR and legal, proving that highest degrees of agility can work in other industries, too.

This talk is set out to inspire and empower experts within and outside of the IT industry to challenge the still pervasive opinion that the high degrees of agility we see in IT are not possible in many other industries, and provide a framework for how to transform towards true agility in the non IT sector.

Marcel Britsch

Digital consultant, product manager and business analyst

London, United Kingdom

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