Become more sustainable with AGILE
Sustainability transition is triggering a fundamental shift in many aspects of our society by introducing radical changes in technologies, policies, and the role of consumers. Businesses are faced with significant challenges when operating in such a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment. One industry that works under a comparable VUCA environment is the software industry. To cope with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity during software delivery, Agile is a set of popular and established principles that help businesses to release high-quality software products. Given the similarities in delivery environment between software development and sustainability strategies, the Agile principles which serve well for the software industry could be used as a potential reference to frame strategies in sustainability.
Moreover, the Agile Principles advocate that Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software. This advocation encourages practitioners to frequently utilize the concepts User Center Designs (UCD) and Minimum Viable Products (MVP) during software delivery. Both concepts ensure the software products provide user values as soon as possible. As a result, the business will develop a committed user base fast and collect feedback from the early MVP release to iteratively improve the products in the future. Similarly, the idea of UCD and MVP could provide businesses an angle to strategize solutions to achieve long-term sustainability.
The news about the world’s glaciers melting faster than expected is heartrending. However, it’s unclear how an individual can help to alleviate this problem. The solution to this global environmental issue comes from the collaboration of academics, business practitioners, policymakers, and investors. As a business practitioner who recently delivered a software solution that helps organizations move towards sustainability, I would like to reach out to academics, policymakers, and investors to iteratively develop new frameworks and strategies based on existing challenges we see.
What is a fruitful way for academics to collaborate with business practitioners?
What are the challenges for organizations that want to become more sustainable in the long run?
What are the challenges for practitioners when they deliver sustainability products?
How can the individuals in the society be more engaged during the sustainability transition?
How to increase the transparency of sustainability knowledge to a large group of people?
How to quickly grasp the new concepts in the field of sustainability?
How to feedback the learnings from challenges back to academics and policy makers?
What are the useful sources to reference when implementing products for sustainability?
How to examine the effectiveness of a policy?
How to iteratively improve the policy in response to unexpected emerging challenges?
What are the channels to collect feedbacks and learnings from academics and practitioners?
How can organizations stay competitive in the market during the transition to a more sustainable organization?
How can we help business to have a smooth transition to a more sustainable growth path?
