Agile working as a mindset

Let’s imagine someone asks you to create a painting. There are two ways how you could do so: You can paint it from top to bottom, with the first version also being the final one. Only after finalizing the painting, you would show it to your customer for the first time. This is basically how the traditional waterfall model works when it comes to project management.

There is also a second way, though. You could at first only create a basic sketch, a prototype, which you then directly show to your customer. Building on his or her feedback, you change and refine the sketch, after which you ask for your customer’s opinion again – and you keep repeating this process. This iterative and incremental development approach is what the agile model is all about.

Agile working gives priority to collaboration, user-centricity and rapid learning cycles. Boehringer Ingelheim embraces this approach. Constantly challenging the status quo by listening to patients or fellow colleagues is key for improving the lives of humans and animals, as well as addressing the needs of internal customers. When it comes to Agile Lead Johannes Gaedicke, agility is primarily not about a concrete set of methods: “Living the values that are part of a truly agile mindset is crucial, not the mere replacement of one set of tools with another.”

Numerous initiatives at Boehringer Ingelheim prove an agile mindset. In this article, we would like to feature three of them.

Information Technology (IT): Empowerment through collaboration

“Along with our colleagues outside of IT, we embark on an agile journey,” Mounika Datla says. Mounika is an integral part of this transformation: Among others, she leads the Agile Project Management Community of Practice (COP).

The new COP’s enrich the IT landscape at Boehringer Ingelheim. “They are basically groups of people who have interest and skills in the same domain, fully independent of the actual department structures and not limited to IT,” says Mounika. Many colleagues have already taken the initiative to form such a community of practice, e.g. dealing with data modelling, smart workspaces or data engineering. “We share knowledge and solve problems cross-functionally – and as soon as we reach our goal, we shut the respective community of practice down again.”

The agile transformation of IT is all about collaboration, but also about empowerment. Agile Boot Camps and Product Owner Trainings for colleagues within and outside of IT are being organized by the Agile Project Management COP. In Mounika’s point of view, this upskilling is key to foster collaboration and even better results through an agile mindset: “Eventually it will feel natural to work in the new way.”

BI Hive: Self-organized user-centricity

Even better results: Meike Bremmer firmly believes that these can be achieved through a customer-centric mindset. Meike became an agile coach a year ago and is currently part of BI Hive, an agile start-up within Boehringer Ingelheim. “We deliver input from the user perspective,” she says.

BI Hive has been founded in January 2021 and is part of the Launch & Innovation division, yet fully self-organized. Along with a network of experts and students supporting them, the core team evaluates project requests from different departments. When doing so, they always ask themselves: Does it actually make sense to apply agile methods here? “The old way is not necessarily the bad way,” Meike emphasizes.

Asking the right questions is also key for BI Hive to identify the needs of the project’s customers. When the team was asked how to deliver autonomous on-site catering quickly and ecologically, they used the design thinking methodology to figure out that the more pressing question was: How can we help to bring food to our colleagues that are working from home? The result: A canteen delivery pilot at the Ingelheim site in a stage of the COVID-19 pandemic when many colleagues exclusively worked remotely.

Be it the food delivery pilot or innovative solutions in the production environment: According to Meike, BI Hive will continue to give valuable input to the organization on the basis of the agile principles.

BI X: Rapid learning cycles through peer support

Everybody can innovate! This is the conviction of Iryna Smorodinova. Iryna heads the Agile Coaching Chapter of BI X, Boehringer Ingelheim’s digital lab based in Ingelheim and Shanghai. In close collaboration with other colleagues, BI X develops breakthrough digital solutions in healthcare – from idea to pilot.

Where should these ideas come from, though? While originally BI X exclusively engaged business units of Boehringer Ingelheim to generate the ideas, the team decided to experiment with an alternative approach: The democratization of foundership. “If we truly believe that everybody can innovate, we have to stop considering innovation to be a special gift or a limited privilege, and get started ourselves,” Iryna says.

The mutual support of each other in the ideation phase and challenging these new ideas timely became the foundation for doing so. In weekly 30-minute meetings with dedicated scouts from the BI X Ideation team and other formats like monthly Innovation Fridays, the new ideas are challenged and experimented with. Iryna: “This leads to rapid learning cycles where we can quickly assess whether an idea has potential. Our peer support adds a cross-functional perspective and really fuels motivation!”

As a result, already more than 40% of the ideas pitched in December 2021 came from BI X colleagues. According to Iryna, all it needs to innovate is a designated safe space to come up with new ideas and try them out without the fear of failing. And the BI X community can be proud of their achievements: One of their products is now in the pilot phase, one is currently in the Minimum Viable Product stage and one is kicked off this summer.