On August 01, training “Agile” was conducted in Zhytomyr within the framework of the Program for the development of small and medium-sized business in Zhytomyr and the Concept of Integrated Development of Zhytomyr. The event was supported by the Department of Economic Development.

The training was based on introducing local businesses to an approach where contractors are given greater freedom to choose tasks and self-organize their work. This approach came from the field of information technology and is called Agile or flexible software development. However, these days agile methods are becoming more widespread and are used in various businesses.

Agile makes work more predictable (despite the external chaos). And that is from all points of view, both from the standpoint of a team and of a customer. This approach encourages experiments and prototypes; it is fast and relatively inexpensive to develop minimally valuable products. If successful, such products are scaled and in case of defects, they are processed without great losses.

The speaker of the event was Artem Serdiuk, an internal consultant of Zhytomyr IT-company ISM Ukraine. He teaches at Kyiv-Mohyla Business-School; he is an author of the program Flexible Company: from Agile to Holacracy and a teacher of the program Agile in Action: Project Management for Creative Teams. He has advised a number of companies, including Scrum, Kanban, and Holacracy. He has been a speaker at Ukrainian and international conferences on flexible project development and project management. He has 15 years of teaching experience.

“Agile is the best approach to project implementation; and a self-organized company of adult and responsible people is the best way to work together”, said Artem Serdiuk.

The following topics were introduced to the training participants:

– problems of modern projects: long, expensive and not quite the thing;

– current approaches to project management: constraint management, schedule management and risk management;

– agile approaches to project management in a difficult environment. Agile development manifesto. Modern Agile;

– agile project patterns: project scope and constraints, distribution of power and responsibility, communication, training and process improvement.

“The entrepreneurs who work in our city are the key to Zhytomyr’s economic activity and sustainability. Agile is one of them. It is not only a flexible management tool, but also a set of values, views and principles. At present, the topic of the philosophy of agile management is extremely relevant, so we plan to continue supporting this direction. A lot of business representatives and not only from the IT-field registered for the first training, which is also prominent. This year, at the initiative of the department, a school of small and medium-sized entrepreneurship has been held twice; and at the moment there is an idea to start a school with teaching such approaches as Agile; it may be a transformation of existing one or a creation of a completely new concept,” said Mykola Kostrytsia, Director of the Department of Economic Development.

More than 30 local business representatives from various fields participated in the event.

However, many more people registered for the event, and therefore the Department of Economic Development is planning to conduct another training on this topic for other business representatives who did not manage to get to the event.

Managers need to use new knowledge and tools to be competitive and expand their businesses.