Why do we even want to be agile?

The one biggest reason for going agile

As Simon Sinek has shown us with his Golden Circle, we always need to start with asking the why question. TED talk Sinek

The first and foremost reason for businesses to want to be agile is the ever-increasing pace at which our world is changing. Companies simply don’t have much time to go from bright new idea to shopping basket. In previous decades there was plenty of time to do market research, draft a marketing plan, attract investors, create several prototypes, test them with selected sounding board groups, et cetera.

Today, start-ups and companies that have already adopted agile jump their markets with products and services that skipped much of the traditional product-to-market approach, as these companies are willing to take a loss and start afresh with another or totally new concept — as soon as the real-life sales results show them the empirical evidence of the bottom line.

Taking small losses and starting again is — in the long run — more profitable

Companies like Amazon, Spotify, and Facebook work like that all the time — they try out new functionality or products and they measure the direct results. If those are not favorable, the functionality or product is…