Agile Ways of Working
Agile working or agile ways of working can be described as the style of working or the working arrangement which empowers the team members and the organization’s people to work with a full freedom that is they are free to work when, where and how they want to. Agile working is extremely beneficial when it comes to either process management or project management. It provides minimum restrictions and maximum flexibility to work to deliver the best in class service and to enhance their performance. It is also known as Agile Based Working or Activity Based Working. Agile working helps to create the best workforce to bring major profit and values to the organization.
It is different from the flexible working in the sense that the flexible working provides flexible start and finish of the work or it gives the provision to work from home in certain scenarios but with restrictions. Flexible working does not include issues like the workspace or the sharing of workplace however agile working covers a wider scope of flexibility and empowers the employees. Implementing the agile ways of working is not an overnight process and it takes time. The agile working ways implementation requires collaboration and coordination of both, the employee and the employer for its success. It is suggested to start with individual departments while implementing it in big organizations as changing the whole organization in one go is not feasible. They are extremely beneficial for departments like strategic planning and resource allocation which leads to new product development and are open for accepting the new optimized ways of working.
Categories Of Agile Working Ways
The Agile Working Ways can be Categorized into the following Categories namely:
- Time of working – When to work
- Role of team members – What task has been assigned to them
- Location of work – Where you are working
- Source – The other cross-functional teams and tasks you are working with
Key factors:
- Behavioral Management – Behavioural management is very crucial during agile the implementation of agile ways of working as trust and accountability needs to be maintained by both the employee and the employer. It is the responsibility of both to understand the work assigned to them and what is expected out of them.
- Boundaries – The rules and regulation and the work culture varies from organization to another thus it is pivotal to ensure that the boundaries and rules are explained to all the team members in order to implement the agile working successfully.
- Agile Workspace – The agile working empowers the employees to choose when and where to work. Thus it is expected that the agile workspace should be fully fledged with facilities like the café, break out areas and areas for informal meetings so that the employees or the team members are free to work in the way they want to.
- Technology – Technology is very important for the successful implementation of agile working. The availability of technology ensures that a project can be implemented and completed with the help of tools and software which allows the employees to work where they want and when they want. Proper synchronization of technology and people is essential to gain profit.
Terms:
- Activity Based Working: In agile working, the focus is on organizing the workplace as per the tasks and activities instead of working on a hefty chunk of work. It reduces the load and makes the task easier to carry out.
- Hot Desk: Hot desk is the concept of sharing the work station on a need basis. This helps to save the space and the desk is not idle for a long time. It helps the organization to reduce the office furniture or desk cost and space issues are resolved. Thus a better infrastructure with reduced cost is achieved.
- Open Communications: It promotes open communication and use of technology for communication like Skype, internet messenger, video calls and chats so that there is no chaos or ambiguity about the work among the team members.
- Flexible working and work hours: Flexible working hours is focussed on the needs of the workers and the time spent in the office while working.
Benefits:
- Agile working promotes productivity and work-life balance of the employee.
- It empowers the employee by allowing them to choose when, where and how they want to work.
- The expenses of the organization are reduced due to better space management of the workplace.
- Agile working promotes freedom and provides independence to the employees.
- Agile working provides maximum flexibility and minimal restrictions while working.
Agile working helps to implement the most effective way of carrying out a particular task by collaborating the staff together. It brings the people, process and the technology of project management at the same pace to optimize the performance and to achieve the organization’s target. It is about empowering the team members working together on the project. It promotes motivation, innovation, productivity, and team spirit among the employees which increases job satisfaction and talent attraction. As the employees are motivated in the agile working so they tend to work for achieving higher customer satisfaction which in loop increases the company profit. It maintains a balanced and better work-life balance for the team members which keeps them happy and jolly which is essential for good work spirit.
In a nutshell, They believe in the fact that providing autonomy to the cross-functional teams and the team members are the keys to get the job done rather than focussing on the least priority factors. Agile working points on producing the product in recursive iterations and collecting feedback from the customer which helps the development team to eradicate the defects and flaws from the product in less time and the team gets the time to prepare for the next iteration and best is achieved through continuous learning.
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