Remote agile: Problems, solutions, and pitfalls to avoid

In response to the increasing uncertainty and rapid change around them, firms are looking to implement new management methods to become more flexible and less hierarchical. One of the most popular of these methods is agile, which aims for reactiveness, collaboration, decentralized decision-making, and increased autonomy. However, agile was designed to work best with teams where members are co-located, whereas during the COVID-19 pandemic and likely in the post-COVID world, many employees are working remotely from home at least part of the time. We explore how to adapt agile to remote work, drawing from an in-depth case study of OP Financial Group, the largest bank in Finland. We highlight five problems and solutions to implementing agile in a remote setting and discuss the situations and types of teams in which the different aspects of remote agile are likely to work and not work. Our findings provide guidance for companies looking to become agile in “the new normal.”