Building Agile Mindsets Through Project Management Training
The agile mindset has revolutionised the way management is structured and enabled businesses to react to changes with a more fluid and adaptable way of thinking. Once applied only to the world of software development and related tasks, it has evolved into an entire framework that many companies around the globe have embraced as a way for teams to keep up with moving trends and rapidly respond to constantly changing circumstances. Read on to discover more about what this thought process is, the 7 key steps to achieve agile thinking and how project management training can help you get there sooner.
What Is The Agile Mindset?
At its core, the agile mindset is a way of thinking that allows work professionals to react quickly to changes in various environments and adapt easily to industry trends that are always on the move. It involves being more open-minded and flexible when it comes to project management and being willing to make unexpected and necessary changes in order to achieve the project goal.
Agile thinking does away with the traditional bureaucratic hierarchy of project management that typically follows a straight line of errands that must be ticked off to complete each project. In these cases, ego can often cloud the direction of the project and a ‘who is right’ mentality can overtake ‘what is right’ for the project. By embracing an agile way of thinking, teams can set aside egos and differences, focusing instead on core values such as respect, collaboration, accountability and adaptability.
Team building and training take centre-stage and there is an emphasis on innovation and problem-solving skills. Free from the strict confines of a linear project plan, individuals are empowered to swiftly navigate any change or challenge that arises to conquer any project goal successfully.
The core principles of agile thinking include:
- Prioritising customer satisfaction
- Embracing change logically at every point in the project
- Creating working deliverables and improving them as needed
- Working harmoniously between business and tech teams
- Motivating teams to build projects with quality results every time
- Choosing face-to-face communication whenever possible
- Adhering to a more sustainable pace of project development
- Keeping things simple and minimising unnecessary tasks
- Creating teams that can be self-organising
- Investing enough time required to produce quality products and services
- Learning from both mistakes and successes
What Are The Benefits Of Adopting an Agile Mindset?
The agile mindset can benefit teams and individuals in many ways:
- Able to respond to changes quickly and efficiently
- Better customer service
- Increased productivity
- More team collaboration
- Higher quality products and services delivered
- Faster marketing times achieved by breaking project down
- Greater creativity and innovation
- Less disruption to the project schedule
- Last-minute changes and setbacks can be quickly accommodated
Seven Key Practices To Achieve An Agile Mindset
- Define Strategies And Goals
An agile mindset can be employed during the initial brainstorming and ideation stage of the project. It is here that an organisational strategy should be decided upon with clear project goals established. This enables the team to understand the end result of the project and visualise the steps required to reach it as well as how they can contribute along the way. Collaboration tools and various methods can be brainstormed at this stage with input from the entire project team.
- Focus On The Customer
Agility thinking puts a strong focus on the customer and their ideas, needs and feedback to create an exceptional end product or service. With an agile mindset, teams learn how to gather and use invaluable customer information to improve satisfaction and produce a better solution. This can include gaining insight from customer surveys, customer trends and data.
- Critical Thinking Is Key
Critical thinking and problem-solving are huge parts of practicing an agile mindset. In order to adapt to changes quickly, teams need to be able to think critically about each step. When something unexpected comes up, critical thinking analyses the situation and explores all factors, allowing teams to act instead of react. It involves:
- Identifying problems
- Objective thinking
- Evaluating different points of view
- Taking a systematic approach to solving problems
- Monitor Progress
Ongoing governance of a project helps to keep the plan on track and ensure you are keeping in alignment with your end goals. A proactive approach to governing involves collaboration with team members, refining project parameters, deciding if alternate actions are required and implementing them accordingly to reach the desired goals.
- Communication and Collaboration
These elements are vital to practicing an agile mindset and help to streamline a project team for success. They can be practiced by initiating group training that involves exercises or agile-based games designed to get team members to relax and have fun while building strong work bonds. With effective collaboration activities, communication can be greatly increased. Software collaboration is also important to keep the team connected in an online space, such as chatting, tracking tasks and attending conferences. The goal is to eliminate the concept of “I” and embrace the agile mindset of “we” where every individual is working together for the good of the team and the project.
- Stay Transparent
Transparency across all departments and through every step of the project is important for building trust between team members of all levels. This can involve sharing responsibilities, being held accountable and providing
performance feedback to help others grow and boost team morale.
- Learn From Mistakes
Instead of dwelling on mistakes, learn from them and move on. Human error can happen due to misinformation or misunderstanding – learn from the failure and use it to improve tactics for future tasks.
Learn Agile Training Through Project Management Courses
Training Bytesize offers a fantastic range of accredited agile training courses for those who want to boost their project success rate and enhance their business skills. Our highly acclaimed courses include:
- Agile Change Agent
- Agile PM Foundation, practitioner, or combined
- AgileBA Foundation, practitioner, or combined
- Prince2 Agile Foundation, practitioner, or combined
Study our courses with flexible options including self-paced online courses, virtual training courses and blended training courses. Contact us today to unlock your career potential.
