Agile practices are a good solution for problems such as searching for new designs, product features or management policies. This kind of problem solving may be well served by agile practices, which are based on rapid, parallel and inexpensive iterations.
However, not all search problems can be solved by these practices. If a firm wants to attain higher levels of reliability with well understood processes, agile will not really help.
What is Agile about?
Agile practices were created as a product development framework in the software industry. This framework is also referred to as "Scrum". Highly autonomous and independent teams were deployed. Each would work on a different aspect of a large, complex problem. There are "sprints", which are rapid advances in parallel towards a solution. There is minimal top-down oversight. Teams are interdependent to a certain degree, which is why there are joint meetings. There is autonomy, immediate and measurable accomplishment, and also a sense of team cohesion.
For speedy parallel development to work, it must be possible to divide the large whole into smaller pieces so that teams can advance simultaneously. Software architects plan modular work. The technology also allows this to be quite transparent because when you see a code, you know what it does.
It is this degree of decomposability that may be very different in the life sciences, R&D or new product design in FMCG. When compared to software development, the conditions for Agile are not ideal everywhere, according to an article on the website of the INSEAD business school.
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