Agile Process Consultation -- An Applied Psychology Approach to Agility

TL;DR

This paper applies principles from applied psychology to agile process consultation, emphasizing joint diagnosis and situational approaches for organizational agility beyond software development.

Contribution

It introduces a human-centered, diagnostic approach to agile change management inspired by applied psychology, moving away from prescriptive practices.

Findings

Joint diagnosis enhances agility implementation.

Situational approaches are more effective than fixed practices.

Organizational culture awareness is crucial for successful agility.

Abstract

An agile change effort in an organization needs to be understood in relation to human processes. Such theory and accompanying tools already existed almost 50 years ago in applied psychology. The core ideas of Agile Process Consultation are that a client initiating a change toward more agility often does not know what is wrong and the consultant needs to diagnose the problem jointly with the client. It is also assumed that the agile consultant cannot know the organizational culture of the client's organization, which means that the client needs to be making the decisions based on the suggestions provided by the consultant. Since agile project management is spreading across the enterprise and outside of software development, we need situational approaches instead of prescribing low-level practices.