View Point (Editorial)

The United States Army War College coined the term VUCA in the 1980s (US Army Heritage and Education Center, 2019). VUCA represents volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. VUCA is an acronym that is trending in different sectors including business and education. LeBlanc (2018) describes our current society as a VUCA world since citizens of the globe face climate change, wealth inequity and societal and political turmoil. The covid-19 pandemic has dramatically increased the VUCA in most organizations and in our daily lives. One promising approach to adapt to these rapidly changing internal and external conditions is agile.

The agile way of working was developed in 2001 by software executives to improve the success rate, quality and speed to market of software projects. Agile helps teams focus on developing team-oriented goals, reflecting on their work and making needed adaptations at regular intervals and using agile practices to have authentic group interactions which lead to improved team dynamics and fostering innovation (Smith and Sidky, 2009). Agile teams work in iterative work cycles and have a built-in process for reflection after every iteration. Teams discuss what is going well, what is not going well and what needs changed. This reflective process helps teams adapt quickly to changing market or customer needs. According to a recent survey (VersionOne, 2019), the top three reasons organizations adopt the agile way of working are to accelerate software delivery (74%), enhance ability to manage changing priorities (62%) and increase productivity (51%). Observing the success in the software development field, agile is spreading across a broad range of industries (Rigby et al., 2016). Similarly, a group of Miami University faculty published an “Agile Manifesto for Teaching and Learning,” which can guide faculty to be agile educators (Krehbiel et al., 2017).

The International Consortium of Agile notes that “Agile is not a process, methodology, or framework; it is a mindset that welcomes uncertainty, embraces challenges, empowers individuals, and views failure as a learning opportunity. Adopting an agile mindset unleashes the brilliance of people and teams, which enables rapid discovery and faster innovation” (ICAgile, n.d.). With the increased VUCA brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, we propose that organizations and individuals need to adapt an agile mindset and learn at least a few of the basic agile practices that promote agility.

The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the VUCA in most areas of our work and personal lives. We know there will be challenges with our supply chains and retail markets and our interactions with our colleagues (Alicke et al., 2020). It is estimated that the pandemic has forced 42% of employees in the United States to work from home (Wong, 2020). In the current ever-changing world, organizations need to respond rapidly to change and adapt quickly in order to remain competitive (McKinsey and Company, 2017), and some are calling for organizations to take a closer look at agile in our VUCA environment (Reeder, n.d.). We can no longer predict what next month will look like, let alone next week. And, we should all admit that while some of the changes to the way we work will be successes, some will fail. To help mitigate the chaos, stress and anxiety, an agile mindset that welcomes uncertainty, embraces challenges and views failure as a learning opportunity can help us survive, and perhaps even thrive, in our new environment.

In addition to adopting an agile mindset, the use of agile practices can help organizations effectively communicate, shift priorities and ensure the most important tasks necessary to deliver value to its customers are completed quickly. The agile practices of prioritization, Kanban boards, feedback sessions and iterative work cycles allow agile teams to complete the most important tasks first, spend only a few weeks or two working on something, receive feedback and then reflect on the feedback. This process allows organizations to pivot if the environment or customer needs and expectations have changed, or when projects have not progressed as well as hoped for. Below, we discuss three of these practices in more detail.

Moscow is a prioritization tool agilists use to prioritize work. For example, think of your work as a set of two-week modules (e.g. breakdown the work that needs to be completed into modules that can be completed in two weeks). To begin, modules are prioritized into four categories: must have (M), should have (S), could have (C) and won't have (W). All outcomes marked with “M” will be completed first, followed by items marked with an “S” and then “C.” In a VUCA environment, it is important to focus on the most important modules first since unseen changes, disruptions and challenges can slow progress or create the need to pivot to changing priorities. Moscow prioritizations helps teams to visually organize what work needs done first to have the most impact. If a change needs to be made due to the COVID-19 pandemic or any other type of disruption, the organization can be more certain that the “must have” and “should have” modules are completed successfully. Also, within each module, the tasks involved for completion can be prioritized through the Moscow process to ensure the “must have” and “should have” tasks have priority.

Agilists work in iterative work cycles, which allows a small amount of work to be completed in short timeframes; often two-weeks. Think of the modules discussed above as iterative work cycles. Agile allows teams and individuals to focus on a few tasks at a time, receive feedback during showcases, reflect on the working process with a retrospective and make adjustments to improve the process for the next iterative cycle.

At the end of an iteration, showcases and retrospectives occur which provide teams instant feedback. Teams “showcase” the work they completed in the last iteration and gain feedback. After the showcase, teams conduct a retrospective where they evaluate what is going well, what is not going well and what needs change. In some instances, it may even be necessary to repeat all or part of a module; remember that the most important material comes first when using the Moscow prioritization, and there is no reason to move to “should haves” or “could haves” if teams have not successfully completed all the “must haves.”

One approach for visually organizing agile is using a Kanban board. A Kanban board can be a physical space such as a white board or an office wall, or it can be a digital space. The simplest Kanban boards have three columns – to do, in progress and done. Tasks are written on post-it notes – physical or digital. When a task is started or completed, move the post-it note between the columns. Ideally, the focus should be on one task at a time, and never have more than three in progress. The goal is to get tasks completed and limit the number in progress. Kanban boards help to keep the amount of work in progress to minimum, which makes it easier to shift directions or focus if the VUCA environment demands it. It is easier to shuffle around a few tasks instead of many. Kanban boards also help create a cadence to a daily work cycle by creating a routine of having a few tasks in progress, which helps to work at a calm and steady pace.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to increased volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity in business, education, personal lives and in our work/life balance. In a time such as this, it is necessary to evaluate how organizations and individuals can rapidly pivot to meet unexpected challenges while not negatively impacting our ability to meet our most important goals. Agile is a proven approach to help complete the most important items first, gain feedback and make continuous adjustments as needed.