We’ve all been there. The hustle and bustle of a busy workday. Trying to juggle all your projects, meetings, and deadlines. And don’t forget to mention the sea of tasks just waiting for you when you get home… With so much going on it can be easy to get swept up in the wave. And while you might love the “fast-paced environment,” after a while… it can quickly take its toll.
Thankfully, the Agile methodology exists to help take some of those pressures off of your workday. But what exactly is Agile? Let’s take a quick look at what it means to be an Agile agency and some of the top companies that use Agile methods today. (Spoiler Alert… Fishbat is one of them!)
What is Agile?
Agile is a system of project management that aims to accomplish one thing: adaptability. Simply put, Agile is “the ability to create and respond to change.” Agile was developed as a way to adapt and respond to change that naturally occurs within any business by building in structured proactive steps that allow employees to know exactly how to address a situation when it arises.
Agile uses a variety of different models to address project flow, but the most popular (and the one we use at Fishabt) is a “Scrum” model. Scrum requires a Scrum Master to foster an environment where:
- A Product Owner (or project manager) orders the work for a complex problem into a Product Backlog.
- The Scrum Team turns a selection of the work into an Increment of value during a Sprint.
- The Scrum Team and its stakeholders inspect the results and adjust for the next Sprint. Then, the Scrum team also inspects the team itself and identifies any areas of improvement.
- Repeat.
By detailing each step of the task lifecycle, each member of the team knows exactly what’s expected of them going into any given workweek. This streamlines administration, limits questions and confusion, and produces a well-thought-out plan for delivering holistic projects to clients in a timely manner.
The Agile method has been adopted in nearly every industry and in many areas of the world. In fact, it’s so popular that currently, 71% of companies use Agile approaches in their day-to-day operations.
Top Companies that Use Agile
In addition to being a proven and well-adapted project management tool, Agile has also been shown to help increase profitability. One study claims that after adopting Agile, “companies experienced an average of 60% growth in revenue and profit.”
Take a look at some of the biggest companies that use Agile for their task management and how the principles of Agile have helped them garner success.
Your favorite mid-day bakery run–made simpler by Agile! Panera Bread adopted the Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) process in 2013 to manage its projects. After the switch, they experienced an increased frequency of solution delivery, higher quality of task resolution, and a much better working relationship with their IT partners.
In 2019, a Dutch global financial institution, ING, converted its operations to Agile. After making the switch and completely transforming its organizational layout, the financial giant improved speed-to-market results and became the leading innovative bank in the Netherlands.
Behind the toys we loved as kids, LEGO Digital Services manages communication within customer apps, wearables, and computers. When they adapted the Agile framework, they benefited from an improved organizational structure, continuous delivery, stable ownership of tasks, frame-based budgeting and improved client trust.
British multinational universal bank, Barclays, adopted the Agile Framework in 2016. Since then, Barclays has experienced a 50% decrease in complexity across 80+ applications and a test code coverage increase of 50%.
As part of Sony Interactive Entertainment, PlayStation Network adopted the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) to improve collaboration and organization across their engineering time frames. In their first year of adopting Agile principles, PlayStation witnessed a reduction in initial planning time by 28% which saved over $30 million.
Why is Agile Important?
Agile has been proven to help 98% of organizations that adopted its principles. From an agency standpoint, you can use Agile to help you improve efficiency and increase employee morale when things are well planned out and less stressful.
For clients, customers, and partners, the principles of Agile help you improve communication, enhance collaboration efforts, streamline sales, and deliver projects on time that exceed expectations.
Happy Employees. Happy Clients. Happy Customers… what more could you ask for?!
It’s What We Do
Agile is more than a set of principles to guide project management. It’s a comprehensive system that integrates and optimizes every level of a task. It’s what we do, who we are, and what we hope to provide to each of our clients.
Fishbat uses Agile principles and a Scrum framework to strengthen not only our clients’ businesses but the skills of our staff as well. We strive to equip our team with the right tools and methods that help them think through each step of any given project, identify any uncertainties, and figure out the best way to adapt and deliver quality digital marketing services to our clients.
If you want to explore how we use the Agile framework in our full-service digital marketing agency, visit Our Services page!
