For industries to work efficiently, they require workers who have expertise in specific departments. Failure to do this, the company becomes a loss-making institution and even ends up facing closer. Besides, the working environment changes continuously every day. Therefore, for the company to be able to engage with this challenge, it requires to be agile. Agility is the ability of an industry to flexibly adjust to the frequently changing environment by use of experts to investigate the challenges of the changing business world. This essay looks at industry expertise and agility at a broader view as well as the principles that govern the agile software development industry.
Importance of industry expertise and agility
Most industries have embraced expertise and skill as a result of the evolving world. Today, consumers have become more specific to in their demands and failure of the company to satisfy them makes them lose confidence in the company. For example, in Agile software Development Company, failure of the company to deliver the software on time as well as providing low-quality software makes the company incur losses. Therefore, the level of expertise and agility needed is high. Moreover, industry expertise and skill improve the potentiality of the industry through several development plans. These developments are seen in the following ways:
· Reducing the time, a product takes to reach the market; time is paramount in any sector of business. If time is not put into consideration, then other companies grab the opportunity by putting their products in the market. Also, if the consumers feel that they are affected by the delays, then they lose confidence in the company; hence the company end up making losses.
· Developing high levels of innovation; innovation is the ability to create more diverse ways of finding solutions to challenges facing the industry. Furthermore, agility helps in improving the level of designs by considering the following aspects; openness among employees to enhance teamwork, creating prototypes of the products and improve them to serve the customer's needs, adapting to the changing customers need, and collaboration.
· Improving client experience and quality of the product; for an industry to develop, it purely relays on the customers' loyalty, quality products as well as services. When a company is agile and responsive to customer's needs, it provides a positive experience for the customers, thus improving the customer's loyalty.
· Improving worker confidence; the morale of the employee is very important since it makes them more productive. For example, if the flexibility and innovation of employee are appreciated in software industries, then they become more innovative as their morale is improved.
· Improving the creation of income; there is more cash flow in agile industries as they adapt to the changing environments and create solutions to problems that arise. For example, a software development industry requires rapid interventions when a problem or challenge presents itself. This move, therefore, improves the services offered to the customers, and in return, the creation of revenue is improved.
How to improve an organization's agility
Better performance in an organization depends on its ability to be flexible and how well it can adjust to changing environments within a concise period of time. To achieve this high performance, the organization requires finding critical ways of improving and enhancing its agility as well as expertise. It, therefore, becomes possible if the following steps are followed. The organization is required to develop leaders who have an agile set of minds. The organization's culture, which highly depends on the mindset of the leaders, must be cultivated. In that case, leaders with more agile attitude will create an accommodating environment for the employees to become agile towards the arising challenges. Therefore, senior executives must set and maintain a culture that promotes agility in an organization. Furthermore, the organization should also hire and mentor the right mix of talents. This helps in developing a strong workforce that is focused on innovation, progress, and success.
Moreover, the process of employing and mentoring abilities to persons who embrace agility should be made as policies in one's company. Besides, the process of encouraging an agile friendly norm and chain of command is another way of improving agility within an organization. Organizations need to have leadership that support talent, and even culture that is built around agility. Therefore, an organization can improve its agility by maintaining a sustainable culture that encourages the ingenuity that is necessary to drive future success.
Even though proficiency and flexibility in many industries have proven to be successful, it also has several shortcomings, mostly when used in an environment with less or no understanding of it. For example, suppose the company uses a copy-pasting process in which an organization uses another person's model without a specific vision or understanding of agile. In that case, more harm is done than good. Also, applying agility to parts of the value chain and leaving other factors, (partial-agile) makes the organization not to achieve the full profits of agility. Furthermore, agile success depends on enough capacity building. If capability building is insufficient, a wrong set of skills and mindset is created. Also, other causes of shortcomings in industry agility are lack of concentration while focusing on performance as well as short-term bias.
Agile software development principles
According to Martin, R. C. (2002), the agile software development principles are the central part of the agile mindset. Also, they help to improve on the way thinking is instilled within the company. These principles include:
· Consumer satisfaction through timely and uninterrupted delivery of valuable software. Besides, it is the best way of ensuring that customers are happy. Furthermore, consumer's satisfaction increases their confidence in the products and the company at large.
· Welcoming changing requirement even at late time in the development. This principle supports observing changing markets, customer needs and competitive threats. Also, this principle supports responses to the changes rather than moving forward and overlooking them. In addition, it allows the company to receive the opinions of the consumer as the project is in progress.
· The timescale for the delivery of the software should be shorter and therefore frequent. This approach presents a clear opportunity for customers to view their products, validate them and even give their opinions on the progress of the project. This idea saves time as well as the cost as the customers are able to interact with their products at every stage rather than after completion.
· Corporate people and inventors work together daily throughout the project. For a better outcome of a project to be achieved, the working parties should be in constant communication at every phase of the project. This move enhances the presentation of ideas from different perspectives and views. It, therefore, implies that a successful product requires insight from business and technical sides of an organization, and this can only happen if the two teams work together consistently.
· Building the project around inspired persons. This can happen by motivating the individuals by giving them the support they need and trusting them to get the job done. In addition, a show of trust towards the workers makes them be more innovative. Once motivation and trust sets in, the members become free to eager to be more agile and creative.
· Measuring progress through the outcome. The principle, therefore, implies that the most critical measure of success is a working product that customers love. If more software is working, then progress is achieved.
· The promoters and inventors should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely. It can, therefore, be done by ensuring that the morale is kept high and improving the work-life balance to prevent burnout among members. Furthermore, constant pace in the market helps the companies to study the behavior of the consumers without haste.
· Maintaining continuous attention to technical excellence and good design to enhance agility. Due to the changes experienced by the companies globally, companies need to perfect their technologies in addition to being more flexible.
· Maintaining simplicity. Simplicity makes it easier for understanding for customers as well as other employees. If for example, the language used is complex, then it becomes hard to deliver the message effectively across the board.
· The teams involved should be able to deliberate on how at regular intervals; they should be more effective as well as adjusting to their behavior accordingly.
Conclusion
Business for the industries is facing a challenge of change. Customer's preference and specification have led to an increase in the search for agility and expertise in organizations. In that case, industries are clinging more towards employee's perfection and expertise. Besides, the level of agility plays an essential role in ensuring that companies are solving the arising problems firsthand. Moreover, the companies are inheriting some agile principles to enable them to improve their productivity. Despite the positive side of industry expertise and agility, some challenges come with it. If these challenges are not looked at more flexibly, they can do more harm to a company.
References
Gray-Hawkins, M., Michalkova, L., Suler, P., & Zhuravleva, N. A. (2019). Real-Time Process Monitoring in Industry 4.0 Manufacturing Systems: Sensing, Smart, and Sustainable Technologies. Economics, Management and Financial Markets, 14(4), 30-36.
Martin, R. C. (2002). Agile software development: principles, patterns, and practices. Prentice Hall.
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