Agile for Hardware: Key Considerations
Agile in Three Words
Iterative. Incremental. People-centric. These three words summarize the heart of Agile: experimenting rapidly, building value in small steps, and placing people and their relationships at the core of the decision-making process.
The Journey in Turgi, Switzerland
The transition from a Waterfall model to an Agile approach was a profound cultural shift. In Turgi, we adopted frameworks like Scrum, but applying them to hardware required redefining key elements: "Definition of Done" (DoD), cross-disciplinary integration, and methods for validating increments. It was a long process because it’s not just about introducing rituals: it requires a fundamental shift in mindset, metrics, and responsibilities.
Defining Value in Hardware Sprints
In hardware contexts, a three-week sprint rarely produces a finished product ready for the customer. Therefore, the team must be able to clearly define what value to deliver at the end of the sprint: a partial prototype, experimental validation, risk reduction on a critical component, or functional integration. The ability to agree upon and measure these results is what makes a sprint useful and oriented toward real progress.
Team Accountability and Leadership Stepping Back
A crucial change was seeing leadership take a step back to grant the team autonomy. When leadership cedes space and responsibility, the team acts with true accountability, like an internal startup: they decide, experiment, and take ownership of the results. This model generates speed and ownership but also requires conflict management skills and continuous feedback. While mutual accountability fosters teamwork, without careful coaching, conflicts can become obstacles rather than levers for growth.
The Role of the Product Owner and Necessary Leadership
The Product Owner must provide clear priorities and communicate them effectively. Often, the real work is on leadership: training Product Owners capable of balancing technical requirements, manufacturing constraints, and customer expectations is decisive. Without leadership that knows how to prioritize and communicate, the team risks working toward blurred objectives.
Case Study: Building a 50 kW Converter in 4.5 Months
Starting from scratch in Poland with a predominantly junior team, we developed and commissioned a 50 kW converter in just four and a half months. The factors that made this result possible were:
Rapid Experimentation: Small experiments to validate technical hypotheses quickly.
Autonomy and Responsibility: The team acted as an internal startup, with complete ownership over deliveries.
Transparency and Continuous Feedback: Frequent demos, visible metrics, and effective retrospectives.
Culture: Encouraging the courage to challenge established practices and promoting autonomy accelerated the learning and growth of junior members.
This mix of practices allowed early-career engineers to quickly become productive and responsible, transforming initial constraints into opportunities for innovation.
