Software, sports and continuous improvement

The BBC recently published an article with the claim that “the concept of marginal gains has revolutionised some sports.”

Why is this relevant to us? Well, in this instance, a “marginal gain” is defined as a small, incremental improvement in any process that soon adds up. Sir Dave Brailsford, Performance Director of British Cycling, was the driving force behind this idea, believing that if it is possible to make a 1% improvement in a whole host of areas, the cumulative gains are hugely significant.

Sound familiar?

The growth of Agile

Most commonly, we think of Agile in terms of software development. Teams work in sprints focused on particular functions or fixes, and are able to deliver releases frequently and react to changing requirements and customer feedback. With each release, the software is improved.

In other words, with every release (even those focused on fixes, not brand new functionality) marginal gains are made.

Agile working (marginal gains) leads to:

• Improved efficiency
• Improved quality
• Improved change management
• Improved visibility
• Projects completed on time and to budget

How?

• Value individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Value working software over comprehensive documentation
• Value customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Value responding to change over following a plan

As the positive effects of Agile have become increasingly recognised, Agile methodologies have been adopted by more and more enterprise teams – 16% describe themselves as “pure Agile”, while 51% are “leaning towards Agile”.  And it’s not just software teams – in a recent survey of enterprise organisations, while 52% of Agile projects were labelled as software/IT, the rest belonged to other industries or departments.

This is despite enterprise businesses historically tending to favour Waterfall working, a more traditional approach with its roots in big business.

via Harvard Business Review

Component parts

Much in the same way Agile software development is about breaking the development lifecycle into its individual stages (requirements capture, planning, version control, testing, reporting, etc.), Brailsford took the same approach. He took the objective of winning races and broke it into its component parts.

This allowed him to identify weaknesses in the team at different stages, so he could then improve each of them. Each weakness, he said, wasn’t a threat, but was instead an “opportunity to make adaptations.”

This approach has led to 16 gold medals for the British Cycling team in the last two Olympics – a solid testament to the power of continuous improvement!

Scope and scale

The British Cycling team is an excellent example not only of how effective an Agile approach can be, but on the scope and adaptability of Agile methods. Agile is multi-purpose; there are no limits.

If going Agile works for industries as diverse as software development and sports, it has a place in any industry, in any department. The concept of marginal gains is saving lives in healthcare industries, increasing revenue in the business world, and improving education as children learn that mistakes are not weaknesses, but opportunities to learn more.

What can Agile do for your business?

As long as your teams are focused on those small improvements, you’ll soon see all those 1% gains start to add up.

If you’re interested in going Agile, or in boosting your current Agile development processes, Clearvision can help!

Our expert consultants offer independent advice and evaluations of your current environment to identify areas of improvement. Simply get in touch for a chat today.