Did you know that 98% of people are willing to work remotely, at least part-time throughout their careers? That is not all. 97% of respondents also said that they would even recommend remote work to others. In fact, 68% of employees work remotely at least once a month while 52% of employees work remotely once every week, according to remote work statistics.
Agile methodology is one of the most popular project management methodologies which is widely used in software development. Frequent product upgrades, flexibility to make changes mid-way through the process, constant client involvement and feedback makes agile a worth considering option in today’s dynamic business world. You can also use a Small Business CRM Software to effectively manage your team and increase productivity.
With businesses striving to maximize their efficiency and productivity, we will see more and more businesses embrace agile in future. Whether you are a new startup or a Fortune 500 company, you can still adopt agile. Agile allows you to react to changes in a much better way. The real question is does adopting an agile approach really makes sense in today’s hybrid work environment? If yes, then what’s the best way to adopt agile in a hybrid work environment? That is exactly what we will discuss in this article.
In this article, you will learn about implementing agile in a hybrid work environment.
5 Ways To Implement Agile In Hybrid Workplace Environment
Here are five ways you leaders can use to adopt agile in a hybrid workplace environment.
Create an Environment for Change and Innovation
One of the biggest downsides of hybrid work is that it can negatively impact the communications and culture of an organization. You need to rely on communication tools to virtually connect with your employees. The real question would be what does your company culture mean when a vast majority of your employees are working from home?
Encourage remote workers to share their experiences and ideas. This will help you spur innovation and create acceptance for change. Due to this, enforcing new changes won’t be as difficult as it once was. This allows you to come up with unique new products to gain a competitive advantage over your competitors.
Tweak Your Leadership Styles Based on The Situation
Every business leader has a different leadership style. Some of them adopt an autocratic leadership style while others prefer a democratic approach to leadership. Instead of adopting a single leadership style, you are better off tweaking your leadership style according to the situation.
When interacting with smaller teams or conducting daily standup meetings, keep your tone and approach friendly. On the contrary, some tasks require micromanagement and a heavy-handed approach, so you should adopt that in those cases. Some tasks might require you to lead from the front while others can be accomplished by offering direction from the back of your desk. In short, your leadership style should align with the nature of the task and the type of situation you are dealing with.
Create Adaptive Roadmaps
Most people believe that agile gives short term goals higher priority over long term plans. Some even believe that it ditches planning altogether for higher agility. Even though agile methodology forces you to make frequent changes to your plans, that does not mean that there is no plan altogether.
Agile leaders must create an adaptive roadmap. Once you have a flexible roadmap in place, it will give your team a clear direction and give them the freedom to make adjustments by looking at situations along the way. On the flip side, if you have a rigid roadmap that you cannot change, it can put brakes on your progress towards achieving your goals. As a result, your ROI will start to go down. As a business, you don’t want that.
Implement Integrated and Streamlined Technologies
Invest in integrated solutions that can facilitate agile implementation at the workplace. These tools can help you in performing advanced check-in for meetings and manage attendances easily. Some of these tools also integrate with your security and access control systems, cheap dedicated servers and generate personalized QR codes and keys for secure logins. Some even have a visitor management system to maintain the contact information record of customers entering your stores. This allows you to build long term relationships with prospects and nurture existing customer relationships. Some more examples of integrated tech businesses adopt are time and attendance tracking software, leave management software, expense management software, CRM software, etc.
Take Frequent Feedback
One of the key hallmarks of agile development is daily standup meetings. As agile continued to evolve, more and more businesses started relying on regular feedback. It helped them to enhance the efficiency of their processes and achieve better business outcomes.
Business leaders do not solely rely on stand up meetings. They go above and beyond with frequent check-ins with sub-teams. This assisted them in identifying hurdles that are negatively impacting the efficiency of their processes. Another advantage of these check-ins is that they allow them to make faster and better business decisions. Once you start taking the right decisions at the right time, you can gain the first-mover advantage by staying one step ahead of your competitors.
These frequent feedback loops might seem cumbersome in the beginning but when it becomes an integral part of your company’s routine, it will work in autopilot and you will not even notice that it is there. That is when you will start seeing its real value. This will empower your teams to bring constant improvements to your products and services proactively. This will have a positive impact on customer satisfaction with your products and will increase your revenue in the long run.
Conclusion
Even if this pandemic goes away, the cloud computing remote work trend will still continue. What this means is that hybrid workplaces are here to stay for the foreseeable future. The rapid pace of business evolution has led to the wider adoption of agile methodologies across industries. By investing in integrated and streamlined technologies and incorporating feedback loops, you can implement agile in a hybrid work environment. It’s no surprise that every best IT service company adopts agile, especially when coordinating a large team with multiple workloads. Adjust your leadership style based on the situation and create flexible roadmaps to support agility.
How do you implement an agile methodology in a hybrid work setup? Share it with us in the comments section below.
