Adopting agile work practices requires a serious investment of time and attention as does maintaining and strengthening an agile workplace culture of support. But is the effort worthwhile?
A column in Forbes reviews some recent research on the effectiveness of agile practices and identifies key factors in making agile payoff. So what does it take to make agile successful? The key factors seem to be having team members dedicated to an agile project for the large majority of their time, maintaining stable team membership, using short sprints of two weeks or less, and having the entire organization committed to agile principles and methods.
Agile methods appear to work because they result in greater information sharing among members of work teams which leads to shared thinking and common understandings. As a bonus, there is also evidence that teams using agile methods report higher quality of life.
The implications for lab organization are worth careful consideration. Adopting agile methods should involve lab-wide commitment and shared understanding of the conditions necessary for maximizing the impact on work and team members.
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