Are your business or technology teams moving to implement the Agile methodology for project management, but finding that it is being impeded without both micro and macro perspectives? Too much focus on the small details and not the big picture can hurt the Agile process and the company as a whole. There are a few specific cases that might be impeding agile implementation for your organization or team. Here are some examples, and what you and your business team can do to remedy these roadblocks.

First, there is often lack of high-level requirement clarity. Agile thrives on communication and collaboration, and if your team is lacking the ability to do that effectively, your project can suffer. Especially in larger enterprises with remote teams, finding a space for effective daily meetings can be difficult. Using a product management tool, such as Atlassian’s Confluence, can help to mitigate this difficulty and make real time collaboration simplistic for both the teams, managers and different lines of business. With this platform, individuals from all level and parts of the location can add their ideas into a single living dashboard for the whole organization to drive behind.

Next, there can be the lack of acceptance to a mindset shift in the company culture. If your team is trying to work in Agile, but still clinging to certain aspects of the Waterfall methodology, the two are going to contradict each other and impeded the transition process. Your team needs to move forward together, in the same direction, or else you will fall back on old habits, leading the company culture to be at odds with the agile values. Teams can find adhering to Agile values especially difficult if they don’t feel supported by management in the pursuit of the change. Confluence can assist by giving management a deeper insight into the process of the development teams and allow them to see the results in real time. Atlassian has made it easy to pull reports and checking in on the status of each product or feature build can help to assure the management that the process is working as described.

Inability to communicate the overall vision for the project, as well as the project’s scope, can also become an impediment to Agile’s success. A team needs to know the big picture of what they are working towards if they want to get the micro details right in a project. Knowing the overall vision can assist your team in better understand the scope of the project, and not only knowing what needs to be accomplished, but why they need to accomplish their action before their colleague can accomplish theirs. Having a system where the map of actions can be organized and viewed by business, as well as the development teams, is incredible tool for managers and executives to be able to effectively communicate goals and deadlines to each line of business. Confluence is the key to unlocking communication with no tasks falling through the cracks due to missed specifications or updates.

Finally, you could be focusing too much on speed. Now, obviously every team has deadlines to meet, and for the most part, the faster you reach your deliverable, the better. However, there is more nuance to Agile than just speed, which early adopters can often overlook. Companies moving with, what the name refers to, agility over speed, allows for teams to move nimbly and with ease. In a team’s push to go faster, they will often find it is at the expense of quality and scalability. Instead of focusing solely on doing things faster, focus on doing things better, from micro and macro perspectives.

Agile is a great iterative approach to product delivery, but it can take some time to get right. Software such as Atlassian’s Confluence can help mitigate some of these challenges that you and your team face as you transition to Agile. Especially pairing JIRA Project Management tool for developers with the Confluence software, integration will reach another echelon of connectivity and transparency. For success in agile, you need a strong, dedicated, informed leader, and Confluence is a great tool to help get you where you need to be. If you are taking the step to adopt the Agile Methodology and would like help implementing these software, reach out to Clovity today and we will walk you through the process.