Discover 4 agile methodologies that will help innovate your company's processes

Adopting more efficient work systems increases productivity and allows for the rapid identification and resolution of problems.

What work methodologies does your company adopt ? Does each employee perform tasks as they see fit or are there structured and defined processes aimed at increasing productivity ?

If your company opts for the second alternative, it is very likely that it applies some agile methodology. There are several of them currently in operation, each with its own characteristics and specific applications, and knowing them is essential to find out which one best suits your needs.

It’s not about finding out which one is better, but rather whether the characteristics are in line with the results you hope to achieve. Among them, we can highlight well-known techniques such as Scrum, Lean, Kanban and SMART. Is your company ready to adopt some of them?

Scrum

Scrum has been in use since the early 1990s and is classified under a project management framework. It is being used by more than half of the companies that adopt agile methodologies in the world. Here, the idea is to create a series of steps in continuation that will help in ensuring production within a stipulated deadline and budget.

Scrum team: It typically involves a product owner, a scrum master, and a development team. It breaks down the whole process into several sprints based on a certain goal, possibly requiring daily or weekly meetings. This allows several teams to work in parallel and enables managers to clearly keep overview of the whole process.

Lean

The Lean methodology became known in the 1980s after the Japanese automaker Toyota made some adaptations to adjust it to its reality and was successful with it. The proposal here is to reduce waste by creating leaner processes. In other words, everything that does not add value to the result can (and should) be removed.

The goal of the Lean methodology is to create maximum value with minimum resources. This implies a high capacity for prioritizing tasks and detailed knowledge of all stages of the process. By reducing waste, the time taken to perform tasks, costs and even inventory are also reduced, which impacts an increase in productivity and profit margins.

Kanban

Kanban is probably the simplest and most practical form of inventory control and management. The model was also launched in the 1940s by Toyota in Japan and remains up to today one of the most usable. Information is put on colored cards, a kind of post-its, which serve as signposts.

After coloring these cards, they are displayed on notice boards around the company, thus easily read and understood by members of the team. Basically, tasks fall into three categories: to do (tasks to be done), doing (tasks in progress) and done (tasks completed).

Main advantages are reduction of time spent to execute any process, easiness of application and usability: "it counteracts the status of being idle for some employees or even teams between one activity and another.".

SMART

SMART stands for " specific ," " measurable ," " achievable ," " relevant ," and " time ." It requires that when setting a goal, the company's managers should ensure it has all these five characteristics: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

This does not allow simple wishes or not very elaborated ideas to be established as objectives without the means or clear methodologies that would definitely ensure their accomplishment. Such a methodology can be applied to any company and even to our personal lives. It is an orderly and realistic way of going about making a list for the pursuit of a goal.