From project to product: living agility with mindset

What does agility mean to you, beyond methods and frameworks?

Let me start by saying what “agile” is NOT for me:

• Agile does NOT mean we don't have a plan.
• Agile does NOT mean we have a plan and that plan is fixed.

For me, agile means we have a plan that we believe will achieve the best possible outcome or result, for example, customer or business value. If assumptions are not confirmed or we discover new potential along the way, we are free to change the plan. This continuous reprioritization is explicitly desired, in contrast to classic project management.

The workshop “From Design Thinking to Agile Development” is about the interplay of two ways of thinking. What do you see as the greatest opportunity in combining Design Thinking and agility?

For me, agility is the logical next step after Design Thinking. Design Thinking enables teams to generate promising ideas. The path to agile development supports teams in the subsequent steps: making concrete assumptions and testing them. In combination with incremental implementation, course corrections can be made at any time. Design Thinking and agility are both iterative approaches. If you were to set up a classic large-scale project with a duration of several years after Design Thinking, you would be wasting the powerful potential of iteration.

Let's take a look at “agile transformation”: What do you understand by this? Where do you see critical aspects?

I see two critical points in particular where you can see that agile change is underway and has reached the minds of employees:

1. Employees in organizations are beginning to think consistently in terms of outcomes rather than just output: “What do we want to achieve” instead of “What do we want to build.” This shifts the actual prioritization discussion to added value and results, rather than features and timelines. Many participants in my training courses return to their daily business with the question, “But what is the actual outcome of all these projects here?” Probably the most heatedly discussed outcome in the public sphere at the moment is the punctuality of Deutsche Bahn. This is of much greater concern to most people than the question of when new features will be added to the Bahn app.
2. Teams take responsibility for their own processes and become “owners”: processes are no longer accepted by employees as a law of nature, but are continuously questioned. Teams feel empowered to continuously improve them and thus optimize their contribution to the organization. If there is a bottleneck, it is eliminated. If unnecessary overhead creeps in, it is reduced to a minimum.

What role does leadership play in this process, and what does leadership mean when control is no longer a central category?

I see three essential points here:

1. WHAT – Focus and prioritization: In the age of outcome-oriented organizations, the question arises, “What outcome do we primarily want to influence?” This could be, for example, winning new customers, intensifying relationships with existing customers, improving sustainability, or taking on a leadership role in a particular technology, and much more. If you want a little bit of everything, you probably won't make any real progress anywhere. We call this the “watering can effect.” In addition to focusing, leadership therefore also means explicitly saying “no” to everything that is not in focus.
2. WHO – Dialogue: The person at the highest level of the hierarchy does not necessarily have the best sense of the greatest added value that has not yet been considered. This is not a question of competence, but rather a question of how “close” you are to your own customers. Those who are particularly close to the customers – above all the product owners – should therefore proactively identify added value and convince the higher hierarchical levels of this. Ideally, leadership does not mean a chain of command from top to bottom, but a dialogue between experts and managers. Instead of “top-down,” today's approach is more “outside-in.”
3. HOW – data-driven: Ideally, decisions are made on the basis of data and evidence. Different stakeholders potentially represent different opinions, which often colors discussions subjectively. Looking at data and evidence brings a certain objectivity to the table. Lately, I have often been asked whether decisions should be outsourced to artificial intelligence. My position: AI can be used for consolidation and as an additional sparring partner, but it should not have the ultimate authority. Otherwise, people may become too complacent and skip valuable deliberative discussions, where the truth usually lies somewhere in the middle. In addition, AI tends to incorporate further assumptions in the sense of an immediate decision, which may not be valid at all.

Many organizations introduce agile methods without changing their attitude. What happens then, in your experience?

In these cases, roles and artifacts are often simply renamed – project managers are then called product owners, project plans are called roadmaps. In terms of external perception, e.g., in job advertisements, this gives the company a more modern image, but the actual potential remains untapped. Sometimes cynicism even creeps in. Sad quotes I have encountered include: “We have invested a lot of money in an agile transformation, so now we are agile. That is no longer up for debate.” or “Agility is scorched earth; we tried it and it doesn't work.”

If agility were a feeling, how would it feel?

Encouraging, self-effective, honest, challenging, and supportive. But it can also be a little chaotic; after all, it's still people at work!

Thank you very much for the interview!