Traditional methods of financial control and agile workflows lead to several practical problems. Let’s take a look at the most important and recurring ones.

Financial controllers often have a limited understanding of core agile principles and terms like “functionalities” and “epics” (large bodies of work that can be broken down into a number of smaller tasks or stories).

Aligning finance control with agile workflows requires controllers to operate on a higher level of abstraction. Agile budgeting requires applying a helicopter view of the matters at hand instead of working at a purely operational level. This makes the tasks of a controller more challenging. The focus increasingly shifts from finance control to business control. Not every controller has the professional baggage or mindset that is needed to successfully make this transition.

Many companies try to adopt agile workflows overnight. The consequence of such a rapid move is that organizations try to turn long-established financial processes around in a few weeks’ time. But this is very hard, if not impossible, to achieve. The result? The work is done in an agile way, but financial reporting is still handled the traditional way: thinking in terms of costs rather than benefits.

Many companies are still divided into many separate mini kingdoms and internal silos. Such an internal structure is detrimental to the successful adoption of agile workflows and principles. successfully align smart budgeting methods with agile workflows.

Luckily, there are ways to overcome the aforementioned problems and successfully align smart budgeting methods with agile workflows. The following best practices will definitely benefit organizations that want to get a better financial grip on their agile projects. 

Train the right people and create the necessary mindset

When it comes to agile processes, people are the driving force behind the creation of important benefits. Those professionals have to be made aware (on-the-job training, defining important principles of agile working in company protocols) of the implications of the agile transformation on budgeting issues. To get a tight financial grip on the budgeting side of things, you need a controller who combines traditional accounting skills with a broad strategic understanding of business processes.

Creating the right mindset means uniting top-down and bottom-up goals. Agile approaches must be embraced by managers, controllers, and people on the work floor. Transparency, which gives you a better outlook on the organizational strengths and weaknesses, is the key to success when it comes to solving bottlenecks and creating additional product value. 

Quantify

Proper quantification is of great importance if you want to attain a better financial grip on your agile workflows. It’s especially important to properly map and quantify the so-called “costs of delay”, a term that refers to the impact of time on the outcomes that an organization hopes to achieve. Quantification helps you to communicate and carefully prioritize development decisions (risks, deadlines) by accurately calculating the impact of time on value creation. Successfully quantifying important KPIs through solid data research allows you to draw up a comprehensive, step-by-step list of project objectives and things to do. A clearly defined set of KPIs builds the compass that allows you to safely navigate the often treacherous seas of agile portfolio management. 

Get rid of silos, private kingdoms and blame cultures

Getting a financial grip on your agile projects requires breaking down silos and private little kingdoms within the organization. They hinder a cooperative approach and block the path towards the single version of the truth that you need to successfully fine-tune budgeting issues in an agile environment. If you want an agile transformation to be truly successful and combine it with solid budgeting, all departments within an organization need to be part of the journey. You should also get rid of the blame culture that exists in many organizations. Don’t be afraid to point out mistakes and discrepancies, but always do this with the goal of supporting each other. 

Be realistic about the transition process

Going agile overnight is tricky. It will take employees a while to get used to their new roles. Adopting a hybrid approach (smartly combining aspects of agile working with certain, well-working facets of classic project management) can be a good way to make the transition to agile working and agile budgeting a little less disruptive. 

Use the right tools

And last but not least, you need good tools to tailor budgeting and finance control to agile needs. The Squrro platform is such a tool. The key philosophy behind Squrro is that teams create the extra value that forms the core of a good product, a view that comports with the basic principles of agile working. Teams and suppliers collaborate on epics. Subsequently, those epics add significant value to the organization. Thus, the investments that companies make to create value lead you towards the benefits. Squrro gives you maximum control over this process. The platform allows you to base financial control and (agile) portfolio management on real and reliable insights. Thanks to the real-time rolling forecast platform and sophisticated resource planning tool, you can schedule finances and people on the basis of agile performance sprints. This allows business controllers to maintain a steady grip on their finances throughout all the stages of even the most complex agile project.