Business 'a'gility - Outside of IT?!

Business 'a'-gility...

Anthony Register, a business agility coach based in Charlotte, North Carolina, has incorporated Kanban to help his company become more responsive and nimble within the highly regulated utility and energy sector. While software delivery is a significant focus, Kanban has also been successfully applied in non-IT areas such as helpdesk support, HR, field operations, and infrastructure.

Before implementing Kanban as part of the Agile transformation, teams were siloed and had little visibility into their workflow, resulting in a lack of customer focus and transparency. "Kanban unlocked productivity and cost-savings benefits," Anthony says. "True visibility into the knowledge work unveiled continuous improvement opportunities that were implemented by the individual teams, empowering them to improve workflow. Flow issues were identified and better understood through the simple visibility of the work on the Kanban board."

Anthony further explains, "The teams were able to better understand the value of Work in Process (WiP) limits, which improved their ability to complete tasks efficiently. Personally, I observed the formation of team chemistry, happiness, and engagement in the more successful teams."