Nike's Agile Transformation Plan

Summary Agile transformation strategies or project management have emerged as important components in the modern business world. Agile techniques were traditionally designed for the tech world and were mostly applied in IT projects and companies. However, these techniques have the potential to transform an organization’s culture and project management processes, which has warranted their application in the non-tech world and non-IT projects. Agile mindset is primarily a collaborative technique for managing work, which is applicable to a wide range of project types and industries.

Nike is an example of a company that could benefit from using an agile mindset in its project management processes in research and development teams. The company can apply an agile mindset in R&D project management through beginning with a focus on providing the most important features first during project management while assuming that any necessary changes would be brought by customer demand or market changes.

Once the most important features have been identified, they should be categorized and arranged in a manner that they will be adopted by the entire lifecycle workflow. During this process, the company’s workforce should be provided with ongoing training on knowledge and skills relating to agile thinking. This helps to ensure that the team does not relapse to its former ways during the project management process, but continuously uses the agile approach.

The other critical feature of applying the agile mindset in Nike R&D project management strategies is continuous integration. This type of integration ensures that the different teams in the company’s R&D department work collaboratively on an ongoing basis rather than on selected processes in project management. The integration also creates cross-departmental collaboration as teams share a unified vision and work together continuously as the project evolves since they are structured vertically rather than horizontally.

Agile Transformation Plan Agile transformation strategies have become essential in the modern business environment since they incorporate long-term plans for transforming an organization’s culture. These strategies are increasingly adopted as part of project management processes as they relate to people, processes, and tools in an organization. Agile project management techniques have traditionally been applied to IT projects because the use of these techniques in software development transform a project with low chances of completion into successful ones that delivery results in a timely manner (Vandersluis, 2014).

However, agile project management techniques can be applied to non-IT projects since they are no longer sought by IT companies only. This paper discusses the application of agile transformation strategies at Nike’s research and development teams and project management processes. Overview of Agile Transformation Strategies Agile transformation strategies or project management techniques have dominated the tech world and traditionally applied to IT companies.

According to Vandersluis (2014), the application of these techniques in the tech world is attributable to their potential in transforming projects with minimal chances of success into successful ones that deliver timely results. However, agile thinking was initially not designed for the IT world only, but was developed for change management projects. Brandner (n.d.) states that agile thinking provides a collaborative technique for managing work, which is applicable to a wide range of project types and industries.

Agile project management is a critical component of modern change management in organizations since it has the potential to generate value at every stage of project management while remaining open and flexible to change. Many organizations or business enterprises have enhanced their delivery speed and flexibility through using an agile technique for their business processes. For these organizations, the agile technique is implemented through every department including marketing. However, the implementation process of this technique commences with demonstrating value to the various work teams in the organization.

The success generated from agile techniques or strategies is attributable to the fact that they promote employee autonomy and personal responsibility while carrying out work responsibilities. Application of Agile Technique to Nike’s Research and Development Teams Nike is an example of a business enterprise or organization that can benefit from application of agile project management technique. An agile mindset can be adopted to help transform the company’s research and development teams as the premise for project management within the organization.

According to Weisbach (n.d.), an agile mindset can be used for research and development teams through enabling these groups to focus on providing the most important features first. For Nike’s research and development teams, the use of an agile strategy entails focusing on providing the most important features first during project management. The company’s research and development teams have been mandated with the task of researching latest technologies and techniques that can be utilized to generate more improvements and enhance footwear and apparel lines.

When using agile strategy, these teams should first focus on identifying latest technologies and techniques that would help make improvements in Nike’s footwear and apparel lines. Once they identify these technologies and techniques, these teams should assume that changes in organizational operations toward implementing these processes would occur due to market demands or customer feedback. Therefore, Nike’s R&D teams should prioritize feature backlog and provide the most crucial features within less than three months.

This should be followed by categorizing the most important features and organize them in order for the entire lifecycle workflow to adopt them. It is not simply enough to identify the most important features, but it is increasingly essential to classify them and arrange them for adoption by the whole lifecycle workflow. This implies that Nike’s R&D teams should classify the latest technologies and arrange them so that they are implemented by the company’s workforce.

The classification process entails working on automation testing and conducting research to help avoid complexities during the adoption of the latest technologies and techniques. For the company’s workforce to effectively implement these latest technologies and techniques for enhancing its footwear and apparel lines, they need training. Training is critical as part of focusing on people, process, and tools, which is essential toward the success of an agile transformation plan. The workforce should be provided with training and coaching in leadership and collaboration skills.

The coaching process should focus on providing employees with knowledge and skills regarding having an agile mindset. Nike can also transform its research and development teams toward conducting project management within the organization through structuring these teams vertically rather than horizontally. The R&D teams should be structured vertically as teams of feature groups with every group responsible for a total functional domain of the application (Weisbach, n.d.). The restructuring process should be part of organizing the workflow, assigning tasks and due dates for team members.

However, the team members should be permitted to comment on the tasks and invite the contributions or input from other team members. This helps to ensure every member in Nike’s research and development teams to be more flexible rather than simply assigning them tasks. Through this process, the firm’s R&D teams would adopt the open nature or flexibility of an agile project management approach. When restructuring the R&D teams, the company should adopt a continuous integration approach for these teams.

This would entail following a similar approach to when pulling together cross-functional teams throughout the project. Similarly, an agile project management approach for Nike’s R&D teams would require ensuring elements of the project from the different teams are pulled together on a continuous basis. Through this process, the company not only adopts a flexible approach to project management in research and development, but also prevents one or more elements of the project from becoming silos (Vanderlust, 2014).

This implies that when the research and development teams are carrying out their work, each element is pulled together as it evolves rather than in the late parts of the.