By Dr Srini Srinivasan, Regional Managing Director – South Asia, Project Management Institute
With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, digital transformation has been the quickest and most effective vehicle in bringing agile solutions to different industries. The Indian IT sector has been at the forefront of change, business continuity and agile practices. Today, agile is one of the most prevalent software development approaches, with almost every tech business employing it because of its adaptability and results focus.
When agile was introduced, it reversed a number of traditional modalities. It put individuals and interactions over procedures and tools, working software over detailed documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation, and adapting to change over following a plan. The use of these concepts benefited the industry in accelerating projects, reducing implementation time, with a faster turnaround and greater productivity.
This has made agile a popular strategy for developing new software and allows teams to swiftly assess and adjust to changing scopes in unanticipated conditions. It is all about revolutionising the business and future-proofing a company against ever-changing internal elements, external competition, industry trends, and new technology. Taking an agile approach to launching new projects throughout the company allows for all teams involved to swiftly adapt and create value on a regular basis.
Need for agile experts
Rapid industrialisation has generated employment opportunities for a large number of people and opened up avenues for them to realize their full potential. However, looking at the pace of change, and the need for business continuity, organizations today need experts who can think outside frameworks and have the necessary skills and tools to pivot and meet the ever-changing demands of customers. With the accelerated digital transformation that we are witnessing today, the old ways of working in the Indian IT sector must change; innovation, creativity, and empowerment of people, teams, and, most crucially, whole organisations are the keys to future success.
Agile methodologies can assist project professionals and changemakers to break away from traditional frameworks and allow for innovation and creativity to flourish. The agile approach, which emphasizes cross-functional teams working on projects incrementally and iteratively in a flexible and responsive manner, is now in use in a wide range of companies, and there are several certifications available to benchmark and test IT professionals’ agile knowledge and competency.
The agile trends
Corporate agility, which has long been a hot issue in the business world, took on a new meaning and identity in 2021.
Businesses of today need to have the necessary agility to allow project professionals of the future to come up with path breaking ideas to create impact. Hybrid workplaces, enabling teams to deliver value, improving cross-functional collaboration, continuous feedback to improve product quality during the development process, and employee-centric policies are some of the most recent agile trends.
A value stream focus, better discipline, improved project management, enhanced client interaction, remote collaboration skills, higher efficiency, better analytics, automated procedures, and time efficiency are the necessary levers of success in an agile workspace.
Upskilling the force
We need to build an adaptable workforce to meet the future needs of work. Project professionals and changemakers will need to embrace an agile mindset, which emphasises constant improvement and optimization as new demands arise. Upskilling, or continuously acquiring new abilities that may be employed in their work and to fill newly generated positions and occupations, is one of the finest strategies to assure this adaptability.
When unemployment was at an all-time low, prudent businesses invested in employee training and development to keep their workers. While recent events may have halted some of those training efforts as businesses deal with the financial fallout from the worldwide epidemic, it is still critical for people to stay competitive. Upskilling is essential for everyone who wants to progress in their present full-time employment, find a new career, or join the expanding highly skilled freelancing workforce.
To conclude:
Agile is not just another word on the agenda now. Organizations are currently at a fork in the road, where they may either continue conducting business, as usual or transform themselves from the inside out. Taking an agile approach to change promotes ongoing innovation and allows organisations to become disruptive market leaders, influencing the future of their respective sectors. At the same time, it is incumbent on organizations and professionals to ensure that they have the right agile skills sets to create breakthrough results.