2024 Agile predictions retrospective: hits, misses, and more

Tina Behers, VP of Enterprise Agility, December 2023

Our first 2024 prediction centred around how the promise of team-level agile could come to fruition. Our experts explained that businesses needed to realise that transformation strategy must go beyond software departments.

So have companies been enabling people on the business side to spend the time developing an agile approach, rather than piling agility on their plate as a box-ticking exercise?

'Yes, I think it's a trend we've been seeing for a while, mostly because our customers will have cross-functional teams already or are moving towards it,' says Phil. 'So the software development team as an entity doesn't always exist. You'll have a team made up of software developers, UX designers, business analysts, and so on. And those folks are working with agile processes in an agile way.'

Phil continues by saying that we tend to see technical folk pick up agile practices and tools faster because they're familiar with these ways of working already, but they're no less driven to transform than marketing, finance, and HR teams.

While the trend for technology companies to lead the way when it comes to agile adoption persists, Shar says we've seen an increased uptake in non-technology spaces, like research organisations, embracing agile working in a more holistic way, too. 'When it comes to tech teams, many people started this 10 years ago,' she says, 'and now they've become executives. So, a lot of interest is actually generated at the executive and leadership levels. A lot of them were developers who worked in agile teams and saw the benefit of it.'

Jon Kern, Digital Transformation Consultant and Co-author of the Agile Manifesto, December 2023

Next up, our experts talked about continuing to see a shift away from processes and tools towards people—your agile culture. They predicted we'd see a renewed commitment to the harder, human-centric work that agile requires, helping people make that mindset shift by communicating a clear 'why'.

So are organisations taking a more people-first approach to transformation? Shar says the bottom line is still being pushed pretty hard, which means cultural initiatives, often seen as 'fluffy', can fall by the wayside. With return on investment poorly articulated and limited funds and resources allocated to get them off the ground, success can be limited.

'I think the intent is definitely there,' Shar says. 'And we're seeing a lot more conscious leadership happening—leaders understand when they do big-scale transformations, that there is a very real people component, which is the success or failure of that initiative. But it might not always actualise in terms of the strategy and being able to contextualise that into programs and initiatives.

'There's still a struggle to articulate what that looks like to the bottom line. How does it actually help? And I think that's where organisations like Adaptavist do really well to help them understand they're not experiencing tooling or process problems—they're people-enablement problems.'

There's also been a broader shift in the macroeconomics of most companies, which means that new initiatives need a tighter business case and a lot of the 'fluff' gets cut. But there's a flip side to forcing leadership to be much more clear and deliberate, says Phil.

'By having to do the hard work ahead of time, they come with much clearer expectations about what good looks like. One of the biggest challenges with agile is the bad input and fuzzy hopes and dreams that businesses are looking to achieve. But with a tighter, more resilient plan, it's easier for people to get behind your transformation.'

Jon Kern, Digital Transformation Consultant and Co-author of the Agile Manifesto, December 2023

A big discussion point for our agile experts in 2023 was how the professionalisation of transformation had eclipsed some of the Agile Manifesto's original principles. Our experts predicted that more and more businesses would shift their thinking, realising that implementing agile requires a more personal approach.

Has there been more of a shift this year towards getting back to the basics of the Agile Manifesto?

'If you take a broad definition of what "back to basics" means, then, I think, there absolutely has,' says Phil. 'We don't see a lot of folks asking us for help with specific things in agile, like implementing Scrum or SAFe. Instead, they come to us with a business problem. They're looking at how to make sure they're applying the principles without being handcuffed to a framework.

'Executives are smarter. They understand that they can pick and choose, and what works stays and what doesn't gets thrown out. And in that sense, one of the purest parts of agile, which is that iterative development of the process, has become much more central.'

Tina Behers, VP of Enterprise Agility, December 2023

With AI being deployed more in relation to tooling, our experts recognised that these emerging technologies must go further, making our workplaces safer to experiment, fail, and grow. They warned that the future of agile needed AI tools designed for people, around their mindsets and principles, rather than just to replicate speed.

Have AI technologies emerged that aren't solely focused around replicating tasks and increasing speed?

'I think we are seeing some trending towards that, but it's still very experimental,' says Shar. 'For example, how could AI help you interpret the meeting you need to plan for—and not just the notes but the people you will interact with? What is the kind of tone you can use to improve collaboration with difficult stakeholders? Have organisations adopted anything like that? I haven't seen anything yet. But there is interest coming through in terms of what that could possibly look like.'

We're also seeing a move from a purely generative AI perspective to a more agent-based approach, says Phil. This idea of 'AI teammates' is something Atlassian has started talking about.

'How that impacts ways of working, whether agile or not, will be very interesting,' Phil says. 'The conversation becomes about managing some of the long-term consequences of the short-term gains. We might see a skills gap between people who learned to use AI as part of their job but who don't understand a lot of the fundamentals and people who didn't have that advantage but have a deeper understanding.'

Tina Behers, VP of Enterprise Agility, December 2023

By the end of 2023, we had already seen an acceleration of agile work models caused by the shift towards hybrid work and the rise of millennials in the workforce. But with the likes of Amazon and Starbucks mandating staff back to offices, has this trend of fluid work and intention-based job descriptions (rather than highly prescriptive ones) continued?

'We have definitely started to see both an increase in return-to-office mandates and an increase in cases where that's not been quite as successful,' says Phil. 'I don't think there's going to be one answer. If you're a company that works remotely, that defines some of the cultural things in your job descriptions, how fast you innovate, how you collaborate, and the type of people you attract. Similarly, if you're in the office Monday to Friday and collaborate in person, that attracts a different type of person. Organisations are now realising that what they provide is part of that discussion.'

We're also seeing different working trends emerge across regions and across industries, says Shar. 'I think one of the biggest indicators of an organisation's success and failure is intentionally updating policies, job descriptions, and all of that so that it accommodates for this change. Because in the same way that many people struggled to work fully remotely, we're now finding that happening in reverse. Just because people used to be in the office, there are different constraints now. So you're dealing with a whole new world of challenges.'

Many businesses also don't know what specific roles will be needed in six months' time because the nature of work is moving so fast that job descriptions become more skill-set-focused. 'No one's going to be doing the same job they're doing right now four years from now,' says Phil. 'The world changes fast, and you just need to roll with the punches.'

'There's still a struggle to articulate what that looks like to the bottom line. How does it actually help? And I think that's where organisations like Adaptavist do really well to help them understand they're not experiencing tooling or process problems—they're people-enablement problems.'

There's also been a broader shift in the macroeconomics of most companies, which means that new initiatives need a tighter business case and a lot of the 'fluff' gets cut. But there's a flip side to forcing leadership to be much more clear and deliberate, says Phil.