Does Agile make you faster? Yes! But not how you might think: A reorganization plus a calendar filled with recurrent meetings won't magically make things move faster. So - how do you become faster?

Work on fewer jobs in parallel

Think of it like this: We have 8 working hours in a day. If we work on 8 jobs for 1 hour each, it will take over a week to complete something that could be finished on a single day if we weren't distracted by 7 other things.

Work on smaller jobs at a time

Let me illustrate: If you have a job that says, "Paint porch and garage" - obviously, that thing will take longer than only painting the porch. By slicing the larger package into two parcels, you get two jobs that can each be delivered faster. The benefit? If you have painters paint your porch and garage over a period of two days, you need to inconveniently park somewhere else for two days in a row. But if you have the garage painted on day 1, and the porch on day 2 - you park in front of the porch on day 1, and return to your garage on day 2. Yay!

Admit that we're only guessing until we have a result

We often try to get the requirements right the first time, then do a perfect job. But - that usually doesn't work. The consequence? Arguments, blame and rework. None of that speeds things up. How about we simply accept that "this is version 1, now we need feedback, and we'll incorporate that?" The time spent on justifications, escalations and bickering can be eliminated from the process entirely.

There you have it.
We didn't reorganize.
We didn't assign new roles.
Or create new meetings.
Or introduce new tools.

With these three simple life hacks, I have helped development teams cut their time to market in half, while also increasing quality and stakeholder satisfaction