The Challenge of Agility at Work

What Do We Mean by Agility?

Let’s start with a key milestone: What does “Agile” – the term we see everywhere – actually refer to? What is it? The truth is, if we wanted to fully understand its purpose, we could write an entire article explaining it. Clearly, we won’t do that here. However, let’s narrow our focus to the “Agile” people talk about, which is a set of ideals, principles, and beliefs that enable companies and organizations to be more adaptable to a constantly changing environment.

This set of principles goes hand in hand with the implementation of frameworks such as Kanban, XP, Lean, or the well-known and widely used Scrum. How do you choose one over the other? That depends largely on the company’s culture, size, and type of projects, or even on the team itself if they have the freedom to decide.

We can have 2, 3, or 4-week sprints, daily stand-up meetings (dailies), use a Jira board to move user stories with a “definition of done,” and so on…

Sounds great, right? But why is it so important for us to be agile?

To Be or Not to Be Agile—That Is the Question

Being agile goes far beyond holding dailies and other ceremonies, organizing work into sprints, creating velocity charts, or practicing TDD techniques. It is about having the ability to apply principles and values in a dynamic, ever-changing environment to achieve our goals.

Agility is a shift in mindset and workplace culture. Having strong team values is the foundation of everything: being collaborative, patient, respectful, self-critical, and, above all, transparent. However, let’s be clear—internalizing all these values (along with many others) is no easy task. It takes time and dedication because it is a process of learning and transformation.

The Fruits of Well-Cultivated Agility

Although adopting an agile mindset and culture requires effort, its benefits are undeniable. When we embrace this philosophy, the positive impact extends not only to our team and company but also to everyone around us, including those who hire our services.

That’s why many can use an agile methodology or implement Scrum, Kanban, etc., but being agile—that’s something very few achieve. And we, we must be agile.