Agile digital transformation: achieving agility in the digital age

In 2014, BBVA adopted an agile approach as part of its digital transformation to better adapt to the rapidly changing financial industry. The bank implemented Scrum to form small, autonomous teams and Kanban to optimize synchronization and coordination across projects. This led to significant internal changes, including a more fluid organizational structure. This example illustrates the importance of agility in a constantly evolving digital world. Lemon Learning explains what agile digital transformation is and how it impacts companies.

What is Digital Transformation?

Digital transformation is much more than simply adopting new tools and technologies. It’s a complete cultural shift within a company. It involves rethinking traditional business processes and work methods to optimize how the organization functions.

Not only that, but it also means integrating digital technologies such as CRM, ERP, or HR systems (HRIS) into teams’ workflows. Digital transformation drives changes in behaviors and skills, promoting a culture that is data-driven, customer-focused, and innovation-oriented. It impacts every department—from customer service to back-office—and fundamentally reshapes how companies work, make decisions, deliver value, and interact with stakeholders.

What is Agile Digital Transformation?

Agile digital transformation combines agile change management with digital tools to help organizations better adapt to fast-evolving markets. It improves a company’s ability to respond to uncertainty and encourages employee engagement, reducing resistance to change.

The blend of agile thinking and digital technologies enables companies to keep up with shorter innovation cycles and increasingly demanding customers. It’s an efficient way to evolve with speed, flexibility, and alignment.

What is Agility?

Agility is a framework, like ITIL, focused on rapid adaptation, collaboration, transparency, and continuous improvement. It allows businesses to adjust priorities quickly and deliver value by driving cultural transformation from within.

The Agile Manifesto

The Agile Manifesto is built around four core values:

1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
2. Working software over comprehensive documentation
3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
4. Responding to change over following a fixed plan

These values emphasize human interaction and customer collaboration as key to managing digital transformation. The manifesto also promotes iterative development, frequent testing, and embracing change to improve adaptability and responsiveness.

The 12 Principles of Agility

How Agile Methods Support Digital Transformation

Digital transformation involves the use of various agile methods, the most popular of which are Scrum, Kanban, SAFe… Among other things, these methods enable us to work in short sprints to deliver value as quickly as possible. They encourage the involvement of multi-disciplinary teams in product development as part of a co-construction approach.

With these digital agility tools and the use of product management frameworks (Spotify, Google, etc.), companies can adapt more rapidly thanks to frequent retrospectives and feedback loops. Agile methods also facilitate the adoption of agile digital transformation thanks to ongoing user involvement.

Core Principles of Agile Digital Transformation

Agile digital transformation rests on five key pillars:

1. Customer-centric and value-focused
2. Incremental and continuous improvement
3. Autonomous, accountable teams
4. Constant feedback loops
5. Cross-functional collaboration

To succeed, companies must embrace these principles across teams and workflows.

Why Combine Agility with Digital Transformation?

Traditional digital transformation approaches (top-down or waterfall) are less effective. They lack flexibility and often fail to get team buy-in. They also over-plan and struggle with adapting to change.

Agile transformation, on the other hand, emphasizes iteration, co-creation, and continuous improvement. It helps align business goals with technical capabilities while ensuring stakeholder involvement. This leads to:

• Stronger team engagement
• Faster decision-making
• A digital transformation that’s more efficient, value-driven, and focused on real user needs

Benefits of Agile Digital Transformation

Adopting an agile digital transformation offers several benefits:

• Faster response to changing customer needs
• Reduced time-to-market for products and services
• Higher quality through regular user feedback
• Lower risk due to flexible, adaptive project management
• Stronger innovation culture that boosts competitiveness and overall performance

Challenges to Address

Despite its benefits, agile digital transformation presents some key challenges:

• Resistance to change from employees
• Lack of leadership to embody and drive the transformation
• Legacy systems that are difficult to modernize
• Limited understanding of agile methods
• Difficulty maintaining a clear, shared vision across stakeholders

These challenges require proactive planning and strong leadership.

Best Practices for a Successful Agile Digital Transformation

To ensure the success of your company’s agile digital transformation, adopt the following best practices:

• Start with a pilot project: Begin with a small, volunteer team to test agile methods on a manageable scale. This allows you to measure early results and adjust before rolling out more broadly.
• Train employees on agile methodologies: Proper training ensures that your teams understand the principles of agility and are equipped to apply them effectively.
• Organize teams into cross-functional groups: Encourage collaboration between departments (e.g., IT, business, HR) to drive innovation and responsiveness.
• Use digital adoption platforms: Solutions like Lemon Learning can accelerate onboarding and tool adoption by helping users learn new digital processes directly within the tools they use.
• Track progress with KPIs and feedback loops: Measure outcomes at each iteration using key performance indicators and regular feedback to continuously improve and maximize value creation.

In Summary

Agile digital transformation empowers organizations to remain competitive in a fast-moving digital landscape. By combining agile principles with digital innovation, companies can respond to change more effectively, shorten time-to-market, and deliver higher value to customers. While challenges like resistance to change and outdated systems exist, a clear strategy supported by training, leadership, and digital adoption tools can drive meaningful, long-lasting transformation.