Agile working as the key to competitiveness in the modern working world

German companies are increasingly looking at new working methods in order to meet the requirements of the constantly changing world of work. A central concept here is "agile working", which originated in software development and is now also considered an innovative approach to project management and collaboration in many other industries. But what does agile working really mean for companies? What advantages and challenges does it bring when companies use this method? Can agile working contribute to mastering the complex requirements of the modern working world? And to what extent can agile working be implemented and lived well in companies? Sociologist Prof. Dr. Sabine Pfeiffer from the Chair of Sociology with a focus on technology, work and society at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg and Dr. Hans Egermeier, Managing Director of talsen team GmbH, discuss these and other interesting questions in the following interview.

Dr. Egermeier, what does agile working mean from a company's perspective?

Dr. Hans Egermeier: In a rapidly changing world, companies are faced with the challenge of adapting quickly and flexibly to changes. Because the competition never sleeps. Companies can achieve this speed through simple working tools, such as daily stand-up meetings. This is where teams share their progress and identify obstacles. An open feedback culture encourages both initiative and commitment to new ideas within the team and enables the company to act quickly in the long term.

Prof. Dr. Pfeiffer, do you agree with this statement?

Prof. Dr. Sabine Pfeiffer: There were two aspects where I would put a question mark. Stand-up meetings are just one tool within agile project management and that alone doesn't make things any faster. Normally, you should be able to assume that people in a team will talk to each other like this from time to time. The stand-up meeting has a special function and without integrating the other elements, I would say that hardly any processes in the company will become faster.

Dr. Egermeier, what do you think of Ms. Pfeiffer's statement?

Dr. Hans Egermeier: Well, stand-up meetings are of course just one element. You have to keep it in mind: Why are agile methods so interesting for companies? On the one hand, because of the strict customer focus, whereby you can be successful as a company by creating value for customers. On the other hand, to remain responsive, i.e. not to be driven by decisions from the past, but to always be able to make the best decision in the current situation. Being able to work in this way is a tough business. But the stand-up meeting is an essential part of communication in order to exchange important information.

What would be a viable definition of the term "agile working" for you, Dr. Pfeiffer? Is it just hype or a buzzword?

Prof. Dr. Sabine Pfeiffer: I would say that there are many different forms of agile working. Originally, the term comes from software development and is meant as a new variant of project management, with a clear set of methods and tools and a clear focus primarily on development work. In recent years, however, it has become a vague synonym for working in a "different and more communicative way" in many companies. If this is what is meant by agility, then it really is often just a hype word with little behind it. This is a far cry from the original idea of developers writing high-quality program code instead of devoting themselves to bureaucratic documentation. Being able to organize their working time autonomously and plan the next steps in the team without someone from above interfering with another task. The elements of autonomous decision-making in the team and the quality of work are important, but agility is often understood in many other ways.

Dr. Egermeier, you once wrote: "Digital transformation is not hype, it's a state of affairs". That includes agile working, doesn't it? What is your definition?

Dr. Hans Egermeier: I believe it is a state because agile working is not new. The main frameworks and definitions for agile working, which were intended to optimize project management at the time, were conceived back in the mid-1990s (source: https: //agilemanifesto.org/iso/de/manifesto.html). That was some time ago. And since some teams have been working in an agile way since then, we definitely have a state and a constant change at the same time. The digital transformation, for example, didn't just happen sometime in 2014, but took place before that and is still ongoing, as can be seen with AI. It is always going one step further and is therefore definitely a state.
And the second part of the question: what is the definition of agile working? I stick very closely to the original ideas. Back then, around 20 leading experts in lightweight methods got together and wrote down the most important cornerstones of what agile working really is. As a result, no real definition based on scientific criteria emerged and the term "agile working" is now used for many things. When a boss comes into the company in the morning and makes an ad hoc decision - is that agile or not? I think the inventors' idea was rather to achieve real responsiveness and to be able to react in the interests of the customer.

Prof. Dr. Pfeiffer, how would the inventors view today's generally accepted interpretation of the term and our working world?

Prof. Dr. Sabine Pfeiffer: If you go online, you will find many software developers who now talk very negatively about agility. However, this mostly has to do with the fact that agility is often not introduced as it should be. In other words, with a focus on customer benefits and also with a focus on "sustainable pace", as was laid down in the key points at the time. This refers to a working style that does not exploit people and where people can breathe freely. However, this is exactly how many companies, especially large companies, do not implement it. They often misunderstand agile methods as a pure acceleration tool. This quickly takes away precisely the quality aspect of the work.
If agility becomes organizational hype and everything is given an agile label, but the company continues to have a "top-down" organization and employees cannot really work in an agile way, then you get the worst of both worlds. If these structures are added to the employees' workload, it is not surprising if they no longer associate anything positive with the term "agile working". Ultimately, the actual idea behind agile working is discredited by incorrect or misleading implementation.

Dr. Egermeier, what aspects of agile working are already integrated into your day-to-day business?

Dr. Hans Egermeier: I hope relatively many, but in principle it is a constant learning process. Probably the most important aspect is that we as a company have resolved to maximize our learning speed. After all, my employees, our challenges and the technologies are constantly changing. If you strengthen the speed of learning and skills at employee level, you can derive many other topics from this. If you are able to do things well, then you can also do them quickly without making mistakes that have to be rectified later. With a competent team, you can act in the interests of the customer and maintain a high speed over a long period of time. In addition, we try to automate manual activities in the company where possible and create an environment in which employees can concentrate on the value-adding part of their work. Ultimately, we want to achieve the goals of responsiveness and the best possible work towards the customer through learning at organizational and employee level.

And how do you ensure that agile working is implemented well in your company, in the original sense?

Dr. Hans Egermeier: In principle, it's really just about listening. On the one hand, listening to my customers and finding out whether they are satisfied or whether there is still room for improvement. On the other hand, I also listen to my employees. You always have to assume that in my position, or generally as a stakeholder or manager, you can't systematically see many things and don't ask the right questions to find them out. That's why listening properly is the first step to ensuring that you can improve. Listening can be done face-to-face, but you should also create the right basis for regular listening. These can be daily stand-up meetings or review meetings. Retrospectives are also suitable for organized listening, where you listen to each other and understand where you currently stand and what needs to be changed.

In your opinion, Prof. Dr. Pfeiffer, how can agile working be implemented and lived well in companies?

Prof. Dr. Sabine Pfeiffer: It is very important to integrate the employees during the introduction and not command them from above. Although this applies to many areas, it is particularly important in agile working. In our research, we also see that in many companies, teams start working agilely on their own initiative. However, if the rest of the organization does not work in an agile way, there are still many points of friction. Therefore, without involving the employees in the process, nothing usually works.
It is just as important to take a close look at the areas in which agile working makes sense, rather than wanting to introduce it in every area of the company. You have to ask yourself: Does it really suit your own processes? Or do you perhaps need mixed forms of agile working in your own company? There is also a tendency in companies to want to introduce agile working strictly according to the textbook. However, if the textbook says that a sprint should always be two weeks, but four weeks makes more sense in your own context, you need to be able to deviate from this. It is precisely this ability to assess where to follow the method and where to deviate sensibly that can be improved by listening more to employees. Critical arguments from employees at management level are often seen as a rejection of change. However, these arguments are often real points of criticism that come from the day-to-day work of employees. Ultimately, the recipe book may not fit in some places, and modifications may have to be made here and there to better suit the company's own processes, employees and internal team compositions.
This brings us to the next important point. Agile methods usually thrive on the fact that teams also fit together well in terms of skills and can take on each other's tasks. The idea behind agile working is that an employee who cannot keep up and does not meet a deadline is supported by another employee. However, this only works if the team has overlapping skills. That's why it's important for agile working to work well that you are familiar with the method and the idea and are prepared to adapt the recipe book if necessary.

My question to both of you: What do you think makes the topic so attractive for companies?

Dr. Hans Egermeier: There are many things that make agile working attractive. We live in a time in which we are often confronted with complex challenges. Complex challenges mean that you can only really say afterwards whether an action was good or bad. Feedback loops must therefore be short, otherwise there is a great risk of doing something wrong for too long. Agile methods help you to react correctly in such complex environments by allowing you to gather information quickly by listening, react quickly and not be driven by past decisions. Plan-based working still has its purpose and reason, but I think the more complex it becomes, the more attractive agile working is.

Prof. Dr. Sabine Pfeiffer: Another important positive aspect is that if you respond quickly and frequently to customer needs, the quality of the products simply improves. Particularly in large development projects, it is important to be in regular contact with customers so that they can provide feedback in good time and you don't spend too long developing in the wrong direction, i.e. away from the customer's expectations. Agile methods can be very helpful here.
An additional advantage is the improved estimation of the workload in the team. One element of agile working is the joint estimation at the start of a project of how long the next tasks will take. The complexity of individual tasks is often initially underestimated, even by people with a lot of experience in a particular area. Teams that estimate the time required together at the beginning actually learn to estimate the workload better over time. This learning effect has the great advantage for the company that the planning of projects and offers to customers are much more realistic in terms of the time required.

What specific recommendations do you have for companies that want to introduce agile working methods?

Dr. Hans Egermeier: As a company, you should know what you want and where you are. I suspect that most companies know this too. And if you are a company operating in a complex environment and want to improve, my first recommendation would be to just go for it. Even the people who thought up lightweight methods 20 years ago didn't have a Scrum certificate. I find it helpful to look at the original idea of what agile working actually means, because the insights gained back then are more relevant than ever before. That would be the first starting point. You should also spend a lot of time talking to people who also work with agile techniques and methods to see what it can look like in practice. This is a good way to define your own point of view and your own goals. There is also always the option of exchanging ideas at conferences or contacting service providers who can help you introduce agile methods in larger companies. But I would say that the first step is simply to take it!

Prof. Dr. Sabine Pfeiffer: I would also advise companies to take a closer look at what they have done so far with traditional project management and ask themselves what actually worked well or badly. Problems that were already present in traditional project management are often carried over into the new method. These then have nothing to do with the method, but are much more an expression of unresolved processes, cultural misunderstandings within the company or other problem areas. If these problems are not dealt with, they can be exacerbated in the new system. It is therefore worth looking back before the introduction to see which previous problems have to do with the supposedly old method of classic project management and which may have completely different causes.

Dr. Hans Egermeier: I can briefly jump in and mention that the degree of agility that can be achieved in a company is often linked to sales activities. If sales makes promises that development can hardly keep, the first part of agility has already been cashed in and you can hardly be truly agile anymore. This shows that agility correlates with all parts of the company and that it is not enough if, for example, only the software team is agile. There are also departments that cannot be as agile as the company would perhaps like them to be. In hardware development, for example, there are delivery times of several months and if a decision is not made today, you may not make any progress in six months. Other methods are sometimes needed to be more responsive. At the same time, however, we must always seek to work closely with the more agile departments in order to be able to function properly.

How will the world of work continue to change and how are you adapting your research and your company to this?

Prof. Dr. Sabine Pfeiffer: Our environment will require even more agility because more influencing factors and changes will be added. There will be more geopolitical developments, the ecological transformation will affect more and more companies in different areas, digitalization will of course continue and the boomer generation will retire. Companies will therefore have to reorganize a lot in order to remain efficient and innovative. For our research, this means we have to take a close look. We try to understand why things work quite well in some companies and why they don't in others. To do this, we go into the companies and try to identify effects in our research that can then help other companies.

Dr. Hans Egermeier: Artificial intelligence will change us significantly, especially in software development, where it will be possible to have something created automatically by software. In general, the automation of thinking is a major change and will significantly accelerate development cycles in the future. Customers also expect the use of AI and the associated acceleration of work. I think this will have a major impact on how agile methods are used and we are preparing for this change.

The interview was conducted by Dr. Petra Blumenroth, Project Manager Transformation at Bayern Innovativ GmbH.