Following the spread of the COVID-19, many companies succumbed to the hardships of the economic turmoil and were forced to file for bankruptcy. Others managed to stay in business, but they had to quickly adapt to the new reality that all businesses were facing - how can business thrive without being able to bring the teams together?

What does it mean for an enterprise to be Agile, and how can product managers use the best practices of Agile as a driver of value for companies and their products?

Working from home has been a challenge for many professionals this year. Many are adjusting to this new, virtually-connected reality for the first time, while others such as working parents have become newly minted homeschool teachers on top of adapting to the new work norm. The changes to everyday life needed to keep our families and communities safe can make it hard to maintain the norm, let alone improve productivity.

Since the first programmable computers hit the market and software developers started working in teams, organizations have been looking for the holy grail of methodologies for delivering quality software. And while the software development industry as a whole has improved, many organizations still struggle with delivering quality software that meets the needs of their stakeholders. As it turns out, delivering quality software that provides value consistently is hard. 

According to a recent Gartner report, “74% of companies plan to permanently shift to remote work post-COVID-19.” Considering this will be the new normal, it seems prudent to explore methods to return productivity to pre-pandemic levels. 

Lean is for prototyping and Agile for scaling those experiments. Wrong! If only the answer was so simple.

The existing situation with COVID-19 has jolted everyone into realizing that enterprises have to be nimble and have the agility to adjust to sudden changes. Many organizations have adopted Agile methodology, but not many have scaled it to an enterprise-level - where Agile is applied from ideation to strategic planning and execution. 

The Agile approach to software development is incremental and iterative. It helps improve the quality of the software being developed and keeps the team focused on delivering business value. All Agile project management methodologies (Scrum, Kanban, XP, and others) focus on frequently and consistently delivering high quality, working software. This minimizes project overhead and increases business value.

Design Thinking is a practical and creative way to problem solve quickly. It does this by guiding teams through a human-centric design process that allows for collaborative and iterative approaches. This white paper provides practical solutions for development teams to incorporate Design Thinking principles into different phases of the Agile Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC). 

Agile methodology has proven to be effective in the IT industry to such a level that more and more companies are asking how it can be scaled to an enterprise level. This white paper discusses issues that can arise when trying to adopt an Agile mindset across all departments and lists 5 considerations that can help organizations maximize their potential with successful enterprise Agile implementations.