Through some of the corporate training work I had done, I got a referral to work with a couple of professional entrepreneurs in India. They were trying to introduce efficient ways of working through a combination of process improvement concepts and tools in the construction space. As part of the initial interview, I found out there was an executive level interest in increasing focus on building people up with experimental ideas to pilot and pivot! Naturally, I explored the notion of Scrum or Agile and there was an almost immediate dismissal of these concepts. The two people echoed, "I am not sure how much these IT thoughts apply in improving ways of working!"
Although our conversations never materialized in any work after 3-4 months, I felt compelled to write about how much work Agile and Scrum must deidentify themselves from their use mainly in the IT industry. I guess the Agile Manifesto principle, "Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation" has served itself to exclusively apply to the software product world. Perhaps the lack of diversity and inclusive thinking in the original Agile Manifesto thinkers has created a stigma about the Agile ways of working to the IT industry. However, as I have already mentioned about Agile being applicable in a non-IT setting (Rajagopalan, 2013), agility can be extended to healthcare (Rajagopalan, 2021). For example, replace "software" with "healthcare" to read as the "Working Healthcare over Comprehensive Documentation," and the principles can extend outside of software development.
Both Agile and Scrum are about empowering the teams to have a working agreement to solve a problem identified (or self-identified) for them by the organization. If the organizational culture is conducive to failing forward rather than punitive, any industry can apply these frameworks, which shouldn't be restricted to any industry. Consider, Andon Chord, that originated in the manufacturing assembly where all works stops to ensure that the team collectively engaged in problem solving! Examples of Andon Chord from Lean Manufacturing have found themselves applicable in many industries with the simplest example of "Stop Requested" in public buses! So, Agile and Scrum are both about the 'ways of working' where the teams are enabled to improvise with experiments to pilot and changes to pivot.
Now, if you look at Dalmia cement, there is a lot of information about their partnership engagement with KKR (2016) that made them prosper. In that video they talk about five pillars such as learning & humility, teamwork, speed, excellence, and transparency (Alchemy: The Dalmia Bharat - KKR Partnership, n.d.). These are directly related to principles of courage, focus, openness, respect, and commitment of Scrum which emerge from the agile empirical pillars namely transparency, inspection, and adaption. Similar concepts can be seen in the US based Holcim Group, one of the famous cement producers where the very first sentence talks about the industry's focus on using agile management.
Transparency is already identified in the Dalmia/KKR partnership as pillar #5. When you look at the thoughts on speed, they talk about having a 100-day plan, metrics, process, roadmap, and experimentation! It is about the ways of working which enable the second pillar of teamwork. The focus of experimentation without the fear of failure is already mentioned that talks about trust, communication, and teamwork without which excellence does not come in. I challenge that the principles of agile and scrum are already applied but not understood. If the right tool and the framework is further identified, think about how it could improve!
Similar examples are found in other industries as well. The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) allowed the use of Agile in Life Sciences and Healthcare (Deloitte, 2020). Here, there were focus on adopting risk- based governance in an iterative way addressing toxicology and pharmacology safety in clinical studies, adverse reaction protocols in later phases, and occupational hazard protection before, during, and after drug development. Centrus Energy, an international commercial nuclear power plant completed their R&D initiatives using Agile approaches (Stracusser, 2015). Telpak (n.d.) using the robotic process automation (RPA) for good manufacturing practices (GMP) and CSol's (n.d.) focus on laboratory insights for good laboratory practices (GLP) are all examples of Agile mindset. In fact, I see these agile approaches pave their foundation for the general automation manufacturing protocols (GAMP) as well.
But such non-IT industry focuses need to be highlighted more! The stigma that Agile and Scrum applies to IT and Software product development is continuously emerging with DevOps and SAFe with too many technical terms proliferating solution-mindset in non-IT industries. So, many practitioners have more work to do! Who is willing to partner with me to write such case studies?
References
Alchemy: The Dalmia Bharat-KKR Partnership (n.d.). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxXxtMYKprg
CSols (n.d.) Agile development in Laboratory Informatics. https://www.csolsinc.com/blog/agile-development-in-laboratory-informatics/
Deloitte (2020). Validation using Agile in the Life Sciences and Healthcare Industry. https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/ie/Documents/LifeSciences_Healthcare/IE_RA_Agile_0320_.pdf
KKR strengthens association with Dalmia (2016, Jan 15). PR Newswire. https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/kkr-strengthens-association-with-dalmia-565397881.html
Rajagopalan, S. (2013). Agility outside of software world: A case study from a theatrical play. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2013/05/agility-outside-of-software-development.html
Rajagopalan, S. (2021, Mar 8). Agility in Healthcare Services: Insights from Clinical and Surgical Settings.
Straçusser, G. (2015). Agile project management concepts applied to construction and other non-IT fields. Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2015—North America, Orlando, FL. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute
Tekpak (n.d.). Pharma Competency. https://tekpakautomation.com/pharma-competency/
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