ESM Drives Agile Transformation Beyond IT
The days when IT could keep best practices to itself as a department are rapidly fading in the rearview mirror. It’s 2019 and thanks to ESM (employee service management), ITSM best practices are driving business agility and an improved employee experience across entire organizations through the spread and adoption of agile techniques and principles. These days, enterprise IT agile transformation is fast becoming a bit more than a best practice. For true organizational transformation while realizing the full benefits of ESM, agile principles must spread beyond software development and IT. Thanks to a great many coinciding factors, including the consumerization of technology, the digitization of the workplace, and the adoption of automation and integration of machine learning, a full enterprise IT agile transformation is possible, especially when it’s focused in three primary areas – human resources, portfolio management, and product development. Driving business agility in these three areas will be key for many organizations in 2019.Business Agility in Human Resources
In many ways, human resources represents the ideal first place to spread the agile mindset, beyond the IT department. The everyday processes of hiring, training, facilitating company culture, evaluating and managing performance, and ongoing education that make up the bulk of the workload in HR can all readily improve from the adoption of agile principles and techniques. Lean and agile principles, and the culture that they foster – one of risk-taking, innovation, and non-traditional thinking – have an important role to play in driving overall corporate culture through the practice of agile HR. Human resources can also play a leadership role in the adoption of agile principles throughout an organization via ESM.Agile Portfolio Management
Another key area where agile processes and principles can play a large role has to do with portfolio management. Organizations that strive for business agility at the highest level by applying agile principles to portfolio benefit from greater collaboration and buy-in and an overall optimization of strategic planning, budgeting, and project management. Employing agile principles to the management of an organization’s entire portfolio allows for greater alignment of executive-level perception, regarding ideal strategy, goal-setting, and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) with the rest of the organization, right down through management to the teams working on individual projects. In this way, it works to combat the tendency to silo projects and teams as well.Business Agility and Product Development
To further develop this line of thought, the enterprise application of agile principles and processes encourages (and in some ways, even requires) that product managers who are used to working in relative isolation under old structures regularly reach outside of their areas, driving communication, participation, and innovation across organizations. The greatest value to all stakeholders, regardless of their particular area, is achieved through cross-functionality in the pursuit of agile product development. Agile tools and principles allow product managers to work more directly with both internal and external stakeholders, tightening the cycle that leads to product launch, and improving development and performance as a natural result.Enterprise IT Agile Transformation
Organizations that have already begun applying an ESM model, driving business agility across teams, are already experiencing real benefits in innovation, communication, and satisfaction. Organizations that are just now getting in on the action will see real benefits as well, as they begin to work to apply agile principles and tools in product development, portfolio management, and human resources in 2019. Read more about employee-focused enterprise service management and the ways it can transform your organization.
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