For example, Asda has declared that hybrid working has become permanent at company’s headquarters, since COVID-19 limitations were lifted. Employees at Asda House in Leeds and George House in Leicester may pick where they work, according to the company’s statement. Employees at Asda, on the other hand, “have the freedom to work from home when it is more productive, such as jobs that need planning or research,” according to the company.

Asda’s strategy is similar to that of Nationwide, which will allow its 13,000 office staff to “work anywhere.” Three Nationwide offices in Swindon are shutting, and 3,000 employees who work there may either relocate to the nearby headquarters, work from home, or do a combination of the two.

Mark Dixon, CEO of IWG, has stated that his organization was working with businesses to “offer hybrid working options”. He said that it makes no sense for everyone work from the same office in the digital world. Dixon also added that employees have figured out that they can work from anywhere, and they want to go office sometimes, but not all of the time.

However, not all businesses intend to use a hybrid strategy. For example, Goldman Sachs International has stated that whenever the limitations are lifted, it wants workers to return to the workplace. Other example – representatives of banking giant Citigroup said that the company works better when workers are together. Employees will work from offices three days a week and two days a week elsewhere, according to the firm’s plans.

The modern world can be described as VUCA — Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous. Bureaucratic companies can’t successfully address the issues pertaining to such a dynamic setting with traditional Project Management methodologies: vertical structures just can’t have the same speed of response as small companies. Various small fixes to existing organizational processes, combined with traditional mindset of both employers and employees, are resulting in loss of the competitive position. Abandoning all hope, leadership seeks the answer and finds Agile, a modern advance in management. This is ultimately the right thing to do… However, Agile is everything but a silver bullet.

What is Agile, anyway? First, it’s important to understand that Agile isn’t some hard-coded methodology. While it’s started as a software development approach, it grew to be something bigger. It’s better described as a global movement, or rather a mindset with the set of canonical rules, which can be applied to pretty much everything. These rules are the cornerstone of everything that’s done with Agile:

• Individuals and Interactions over processes and tools;
• Working product over comprehensive documentation;
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation;
• Responding to change over following a plan.

It’s great, isn’t it? But there’s always a catch. Despite all the appeal of Agile, we must remember that it’s really imperfect. Yes, Agile projects on average are much more successful than the ones with traditional PM in mind. Sure, there are quite a lot of successful use cases. However, there are a lot of failed ones, too, and most of them failed for the similar reasons with each other.

Agile mindset might be instrumental for modern companies that want to survive in the uncontrollable environment. At the same time, it’s important to understand that adherence to Agile wouldn’t necessary provide better results than any other PM methodology, but it would be better in some contexts. So, you must check if your company really needs Agile transformation. Sometimes organizations just don’t need it!

Agile by itself isn’t a cure-all solution. However, the right implementation can provide your company with a critical competitive edge. Dozens of small companies and large corporations have already transformed themselves to Agile, from Spotify with their music subscription service to Saab Defense with 4+ Jet Fighter. Can you do the same?

1 – “13th Annual State Of Agile Report” by CollabNet VersionOne, 2019.