Our experience shows that Agile Management can be adapted to the specific needs of industrial R&D and is then at least as relevant and effective as in software.
Yet we meet teams who say they tried on their own and are disappointed with the results!?!
Here are examples of testimonials from teams who try on their own to transpose “software” Agility to their “hardware” development and fail.
The testimonials always start with: Agility doesn't work for us, and yet, ...
... we have a Post-it board!
If your 4 Post-its are “needs analysis”, “specifications”, “general design”, “detailed design”, you're in traditional management, just wasting Post-its.
... we have a one-hour Daily Meeting every week!
“Daily” is an English word whose meaning will surprise you. We adapt Dailies to working days but they must stay regular and short. Renaming your weekly production meeting to “Daily” changes nothing.
... we're doing Scrum because we do Sprints!
Sprint is such a poorly chosen word. If your Sprints = firefighter mode at the end of the project, it's not sustainable, it's not Agile.
If your Sprints are variable in size without Releases (common in automotive), you're doing Kanban (workflow management), not Scrum. The objectives and results are different.
... we plan in days using Poker Planning!
Everyone notices that time estimates are wrong. What about the Burndown Chart? Are dates being met? Is the team motivated and seeing progress?
... we listen to the client, they're even our Product Owner!
The Product Owner is the interface with the client, why skip the interface?
Is it serious, doctor?
NOTHING is serious, one can believe they're doing Agile without really doing it. For us it stings to hear “we're Agile and it doesn't work” when our Yuka says “0% Agile”.
You CAN and MUST adapt Agility for non-software industries, but you can't just pick the visible elements (like Post-its) without capturing the spirit that makes the approach effective.
Discover the Agile Methods for Physical R&D training, the agilitehardware.fr website dedicated to Agility outside IT, and our client references.
