Those who have worked with me know that I am a strong proponent of pragmatically applying Agile principles. In this blog, I want to share my experiences on how these principles can enhance supply chain integration projects. It’s crucial to understand that Agile’s scope extends far beyond just using Scrum in a project or program. It includes everything from strategically defining an initiative, addressing operational optimization, to the final rollout of a digital implementation.

Completing supply chain integration projects on time, within budget, and delivering the expected business benefits is a major challenge due to several factors:

1. Communication Issues: Parties often do not speak the same language, leading to unclear scope, deliverables, and responsibilities. Standardization for interoperability occurs without understanding the context in which data is used. Think of unclear scope, deliverables and responsibilities.
2. Unclear Planning: Lack of clear planning, priorities, and understanding of who does what and when, jeopardizes progress and leaves stakeholders uncertain about when to expect business benefits.
3. Insufficient Knowledge Retention: Inadequate documentation and insight during and after the project make future changes and incidents difficult to resolve.
4. Rapid Changes: The fast-paced world increases the strategic value of agile supply chains. Strategic changes often occur before previous initiatives are completed.
5. Lack of System Knowledge: System Knowledge Gaps: Lack of understanding of underlying systems’ capabilities and limitations often results in missing expertise, which must be sought ad hoc and at high costs if available. There is also a risk of vendor lock-in.
6. Context-Less Standardization: Standardization for interoperability occurs without understanding the context in which data is used.

Applying Agile principles to these strategic initiatives helps make your company more agile.

Strategic practices

Every Agile initiative begins with a strategic component. These practices aim to collaboratively develop the desired integration strategy and solution with the organization and partners. This involves defining a long-term vision and short-term objectives, listing necessary initiatives, and assigning initial priorities.

This approach offers significant advantages throughout the project, such as:

• Clearer understanding of the project’s value.
• A solid basis for prioritizing activities during execution and adjusting based on changes.
• A common language between parties, making communication more efficient.
• Clearer roles and responsibilities at both stakeholder and execution levels.
• Ability to track progress in terms of realized business benefits.

Operational practices

Supply chains consist of a series of activities, making these projects closely related to process optimization. These practices are particularly valuable at the beginning because an end-to-end overview is often lacking. Working with all parties in the chain prevents sub-optimization and encourages innovative solutions. This is valuable for an organization, regardless of the goal of technical integration and automation

By applying these practices, you can expect the following benefits:

• Insight into the current value chain structure (documentation).
• A clear link between strategic goals and the execution of the integration project.
• Clear communication about progress and the value to be delivered.
• Insight into which parties need to collaborate for various components.
• Ensuring that all necessary data is available at the right time, with the right quality, in a secure and transparent manner (data management).

Implementation practices

The previous practices ensure that execution via methods like Scrum is much more effective. I often see Agile projects where teams work in a Scrum manner, but many prerequisites are neglected. Teams are not set up cross-functionally and require many external people. Stakeholders are poorly chosen, making early adjustments impossible, and many more practices are necessary to reap the benefits of Agile. The result is that Scrum is misused to manage standard project activities, adding only extra overhead.

By adopting this integrated Agile approach, you will gain the following benefits from the implementation practices:

• More efficient implementation as teams possess all the knowledge to independently deliver parts and are committed to delivering prioritized parts.
• A quick feedback loop to see if project components will create the right value, allowing for faster adjustments.
• Communication of progress in terms that stakeholders understand.
• More efficient management of challenges, causing less delay as the project leader takes on more of a facilitator role.

Conclusion

By pragmatically applying Agile principles in supply chain integration projects, companies can not only execute their projects more efficiently and effectively but also increase their agility. This leads to better adaptation to changing market conditions and greater strategic value for the business. It is an investment in the future that pays off in many ways.