Assuming that you’re already familiar with what Agile project management is and its core principles, I wanted to walk you through 11 examples of Agile in action.
First, I’ll provide seven examples of Agile project management per industry, explaining how different industries use Agile. Then, I’ll walk you through four examples of real companies using Agile to increase their flexibility and improve product quality.
7 Agile project management examples per industry
Here’s a breakdown of how different industries use Agile methodologies:
#1: IT management
The IT management industry uses Agile methodologies to break down projects into smaller cycles called sprints or iterations, typically lasting 2-4 weeks.
Our IT department at Smartsuite does this, as it allows them to deliver incremental improvements and adapt to the various requests of our customers in various industries.
IT teams typically use various Agile frameworks, such as Scrum, Kanban, and SAFe, to organize workflows visually, manage backlogs, and optimize team productivity.
➡️ Our IT department uses a Kanban view for IT work requests, which helps them visualize the priority, status, and due date of tasks.
You can take a look and play with our template for IT teams here and select ‘’Kanban View’’ from the right sidebar.
The goal of the Agile methodology in IT management is to promote cross-functional teamwork and daily communication between the developers, stakeholders, and customers to reduce misunderstandings and speed up the decision-making process.
Instead of waiting for the next meeting to discuss matters, our Agile IT team use our Communication Centre, where they communicate right where their work is being performed.
#2: HR
HR teams can use Agile methodologies to streamline their hiring process.
The reason why more and more HR teams have been adopting Agile methodologies is to help them improve their flexibility, responsiveness to candidates, and break down large initiatives into smaller, manageable tasks.
As a project management example, our HR team uses a Kanban board as their digital job board, where they are tracking applicants by position across each stage of the hiring process.
The HR teams can process job applications across multiple stages and use SmartSuite’s Kanban board to monitor applicants by stages like "Applied," "Interviewed," and "Hired."
What’s more, Agile HR teams can replace the traditional annual reviews with regular feedback loops in their organization.
That includes:
- Frequent check-ins with the team.
- Performance discussions after campaigns.
- Weekly calls with individual employees.
As one of the core principles of Agile is to ‘’satisfy the customer’’, HR teams focus on understanding employee needs (their customers) through these feedback loops and create a better working environment.
➡️ HR teams can do sprints as well, such as delivering a new HR policy in phases and collecting participant feedback at each stage to refine future iterations.
#3: Product management
Product management teams have adopted Agile methodologies to iteratively develop and refine products through flexible planning, continuous feedback, and collaboration to adapt to changing customer needs.
The way product management teams use Agile is by breaking work into short cycles, typically between 1-4 weeks, to deliver incremental updates and learn on the go from customer feedback.
For example, our product team has also adopted Agile by releasing features quickly and first shipping them to our existing customers to see their feedback before they are released to the broader public.
Product management teams can also build dynamic product backlogs by prioritizing lists of features, bugs, and user stories. A certain theme (such as improving user engagement) guides the epics with tasks broken into granular actions.
➡️ Epics are strategic, high-level initiatives in Agile product management that break down into user stories—smaller, actionable tasks delivering incremental value toward broader business objectives.
Here’s an example of story points by sprint in Scrum management: 👇
You can access our Scrum template for product management here.
Learn more about how Agile product teams use SmartSuite:
#4: Software development
Software development teams, similar to product management teams, can use Agile methodologies to quickly iterate on features and review their performance from the sprints.
Kanban boards, a fan favourite in software teams, let you visually manage your backlog, prioritizing stories and grouping them into sprints.
You can design swimlanes (e.g., "To Do," "In Progress," "Done") and link task cards to SmartSuite.
This setup allows real-time updates, seamless task tracking, and alignment with sprint goals.
Our software development team see Kanban boards as their digital version of a whiteboard with colored sticky notes where they can see the status, assigned person, and estimate.
Inside SmartSuite, team leads can see what each employee’s day workload looks like and the tasks that are being worked on and submitted.
#5: Creative design
Creative design teams use Agile to iteratively develop and refine designs through flexible planning, continuous user feedback, and cross-functional collaboration.
This approach emphasizes adaptability to evolving project requirements and customer needs while maintaining a focus on innovation.
The way it works (at least in our team) is that teams break projects into short cycles of 1–4 weeks, focusing on incremental deliverables like prototypes or design concepts.
Our creative design team holds regular feedback sessions with our product management team to ensure user alignment and visualize progress.
Here’s an example of a design team working on a website relaunch project using Agile methodologies:
- Sprint Planning: Identifying core features (e.g., homepage layout) for a 2-week sprint.
- Prototyping: Developing wireframes and interactive mockups.
- User Testing: Sharing prototypes with a small user group for feedback.
- Iteration: Refining designs based on insights from the focus groups before the next sprint.
This iterative process reduces the risk of late-stage rejections of both stakeholders and customers by validating ideas early and adapting to feedback efficiently.
SmartSuite lets you track all your designs by channel – product, marketing, social, and more - and status to visualize what's in process, under review, and ready to publish.
You can find the right resource to complete the right task based on their capacity with our Member Directory or set up automations to automatically update fields.
#6: Marketing
The way marketing teams use Agile methodologies is to enhance and prioritize data-driven decisions and deliver iterative campaigns that adapt to market or consumer changes.
By breaking work into short cycles (sprints), teams focus on rapid experimentation, audience feedback, and continuous optimization.
➡️ Agile marketing teams usually adopt daily stand-up meetings, which are brief meetings to align on priorities, address blockers, and maintain their momentum.
In these stand-up meetings, marketing teams combine specialized skills (e.g., content, SEO, and paid ads) to avoid silos and ensure diverse perspectives.
Marketing campaigns, such as a TikTok Ads campaign, are being optimized using real numbers rather than assumptions. Teams then either pivot or continue running their campaigns.
I’ve found that Agile marketing teams are particularly fond of SmartSuite’s whiteboards to plan their sprints and/or to visualize their campaign progress.
You can check out how to create and use a whiteboard in SmartSuite:
Let’s take an example with a social media campaign sprint:
- Task breakdown: Creating content, scheduling posts, and monitoring engagement as separate cards.
- Collaboration: Team members move cards across swimlanes of the Kanban board during daily stand-ups.
- Review: At the sprint’s end, performance metrics guide the next cycle’s priorities, such as better use of emojis in the next sprint.
#7: Sales
Lastly, I wanted to show you how sales teams can use Agile methodologies to improve their productivity by better tracking leads.
Sales teams can create a Kanban board for tracking the different stages of the lead lifecycle, including ‘’lead’’, ‘’qualified’’, ‘’proposal’’, and ‘’deal won.’’
An interesting use case of Kanban for sales is for real estate agents, who can track property sales through their stages.
Real estate agents can use SmartSuite’s Kanban board to manage deals visually, instead of on paper, from leads to closing with status groupings.
But that’s not where it ends for Agile sales teams.
You can set up a custom real-time dashboard inside SmartSuite to provide up-to-date information at a glance with no need for manual report generation every time you need an update.
Learn more about how sales teams can set up a custom dashboard in SmartSuite from Layla Pomper.
4 real-world examples of teams adopting Agile methodologies
Now that we have gone over the different industries that have been adopting Agile methodologies, I also wanted to walk you through 4 real-life examples of organizations that have become Agile to transform their operational processes: 👇
1. Phillips
Phillips, a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation, embarked on a large-scale Agile transformation to address the challenges they were facing in software development.
The company was facing issues with development speed, quality, and cross-team alignment, with up to 18 months of release cycles and feature development taking 8+ months at times.
Phillips implemented SAFe (scaled Agile framework) to both improve their overall productivity, innovation, and responsiveness ot their ever-changing market demands.
The way it was adopted was through its I2M Excellence Idea to Market program, starting with Scrum as a foundation and scaling with SAFe practices.
The key steps in their transformation included:
- Piloting Agile practices in software development before expanding to hardware and systems engineering.
- Establishing Agile Release Trains (ARTs) to synchronize multidisciplinary teams across geographies.
- Integrating continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines and DevOps practices.
- Training over 1,300 employees in SAFe and engaging 3,700+ in Agile workflows globally.
Data and image from Scaled Agile.
The company’s leadership also played a critical role in the whole deal, with executives participating in 4-8 hour briefings to align on SAFe principles.
Results: Phillips’ release cycle was reduced by 66% (from 18 down to about 6 months), and their feature development time was cut by 58% (from more than 240 days to less than 100 days per feature).
2. Toyota
Toyota was facing systemic inefficiencies rooted in outdated processes and misaligned systems.
It was then that Taiichi Ohno, one of Toyota’s executives, developed the Toyota Production System (TPS), building on earlier concepts like Jidoka (invented in the early 20th century) and Just-in-Time (pioneered in the 1930s).
Its foundations emerged in the 1950s as a response to post-WWII resource constraints and the need to compete with Ford’s mass production.
Taiichi Ohno and Eiji Toyoda refined TPS over the decades, formalizing concepts like Just-in-Time and Jidoka.
Note: The term "Agile methodologies" (e.g., Scrum) originated in software development (2001 Agile Manifesto) and is unrelated to TPS. The reason I included this example is that it’s relevant to how modern Agile project management has developed.
TPS emphasizes continuous improvement (kaizen) and employee empowerment, with cross-functional teams in TPS being designed for problem-solving.
Result: Toyota’s adoption of old-school Agile resulted in increased agility, responsiveness, and quality in its manufacturing processes.
After the successful implementation of Toyota’s TPS, Western manufacturers started studying Toyota’s success. This led to the widespread adoption of lean production.
3. Bosch
Bosch was facing issues with prioritizing tasks, having siloed problem-solving and having annual planning cycles.
The company originally faced skepticism when announcing its Agile intentions, with employees anticipating superficial adoption of Agile terminology without substantive change.
In the past, the brand tried a ‘’dual organization" model, separating Agile innovation teams from business-as-usual operations, but this approach failed to deliver meaningful results.
The breakthrough came when the CEO, Volkmar Denner, and the board redefined their role: Leadership-led transformation.
The executives formed cross-functional Scrum teams, adopting roles like Product Owner and Scrum Master.
That meant board meetings would shift from formal presentations to collaborative sessions using visual planning walls.
They even replaced their annual planning with continuous budgeting cycles and sprint-based prioritization for faster response to market shifts.
Result: Bosch was able to improve improve their operational efficiency and accelerate their innovation.
They collaborated with Tesla to cut their development time for chassis systems in half, earning Bosch an "Excellent Development Partner Award".
The brand was able to expand its Agile practices beyond software teams to hardware divisions (such as power tools) and IoT sensor development.
Editor’s note: Such a transformation from Bosch demonstrates us how top-down commitment to Agile practices can drive innovation in complex industrial environments, even in traditional industries.
It was Bosch’s leadership team that drove that change to their organization after a failed first trial. They were truly ‘’walking the talk’’ with Agile.
4. Valve
Valve had an interesting approach to adopting Agile methodologies.
The multinational corporation wanted to replace its traditional hierarchical structures with self-organized teams and iterative development.
The brand was facing challenges, such as having limited adaptability to market shifts in the gaming industry and slower innovation cycles.
Valve knew that their problems stemmed from their hierarchical structure, which is why they did something radical: they restructured their hierarchy to be flat, eliminating traditional management layers.
The goal was to empower developers to choose projects aligned with their expertise and interests.
The company originally integrated Scrum practices, such as:
- Visual task management: Physical boards with sticky notes tracked progress and prioritized tasks during sprints.
- Cross-functional collaboration: Teams combined diverse skill sets (e.g., designers, engineers) to address complex challenges together.
- Iterative releases: Regular updates to platforms like Steam and games like Dota 2 allowed rapid incorporation of user feedback.
After some time, the company’s agility was built around iterative development and feedback with no sprints, no backlogs, no Scrum, and no SAFe.
You can learn more about Valve’s new Agile development here in this video that I found:
Result: This cultural shift of Valve fostered intrinsic motivation and aligned the employees’ personal creativity with project goals.
This innovation further led to household titles like Half-Life and Portal, which emerged from the new decentralized, passion-driven development.
What are the 3 best project management tools for Agile teams?
Now that we’ve gone over the various examples of Agile project management, I wanted to end this article by walking you through our 3 handpicked Agile project management tools.
1. SmartSuite
SmartSuite (that’s us) offers the best platform for Agile teams looking for a wide range of highly customizable features, work management, communication tools, and different project views.
Due to our platform’s flexibility, it easily fits into both Agile and non-Agile frameworks.
SmartSuite can be used to manage all kinds of projects while applying any framework and methodology you need.
Let’s dive into some of SmartSuite’s features critical for supporting Agile methodologies: 👇
Feature #1: Comprehensive project management
SmartSuite has a wide range of project management tools that support the Agile framework, allowing your team to:
- Break projects into smaller phases.
- Allocate resources optimally.
- Gain better visibility into each project’s progress.
Some of these tools include the following:
- Customizable dashboards: SmartSuite's intuitive dashboard builder and widgets make it easy to create any kind of dashboard.
For example, your team can create product roadmaps, release plans, Scrum boards, and even reporting dashboards to visualize and track project progress.
- Customizable views: SmartSuite lets you view your data and records in any way your team needs, ranging from simple grid and calendar views to Kanban boards and Gantt charts for multiple timeline management and organization.
- Comprehensive resource allocation: You can track time and budgets, assign tasks and monitor their completion.
- Workflow automation: You can automate all kinds of workflows and tasks with SmartSuite, from capturing customer feedback to tracking bugs.
Feature #2: Templates for Agile workflows
SmartSuite offers a rich library of customizable templates for various project types, use cases, and management workflows, including Agile.
You can set up essential Agile project management workflows in a fraction of the time it would take to do it from scratch.
Some of our Agile team’s favorite templates include:
- Customer feedback: Collect and consolidate customer feedback across sources to get a centralized source of truth. View and filter based on various factors, such as feedback language, feature, product, sentiment, etc.
- Feature prioritization: Prioritize the features your users want most so you can focus on developing and releasing them first.
- Competitor analysis: Keep an eye on your competitors, analyze their pros and cons, and identify potential opportunities for your growth.
- Scrum tables: Set up sprints, roadmaps, bug lists, and more to get a better overview of your project's progress.
- Product roadmap: Design a roadmap that best fits your product, business goals, and team preferences.
Feature #3: Real-time collaboration
I understand that collaboration and teamwork are two critical components of the Agile methodology.
This is why SmartSuite has several powerful collaboration features that ensure everyone in your team is kept in the loop at all times:
- Communication center: Talk to team members within the platform, right next to a specific project. You can also attach important files, share links, and more, keeping a constant flow of ideas and boosting efficiency across levels.
- Mentions: Use @mentions to easily get the coworker you need to look at a particular task or project segment.
- Real-time updates: Every action taken in a project is immediately visible to the rest of the team, ensuring that every team member is always working on the latest version.
- SmartDocs: Work on creating and editing dynamic text documents similar to those available in Google Docs, Notion, and Coda. It’s perfect for collaborative editing, brainstorming on product plans, and more.
- SmartSuite’s mobile app for iOS and Android: Useful for remote, hybrid, or multi-locational teams so that everyone can access and edit projects.
Pricing
SmartSuite offers a free-forever plan for teams that are just getting started with Agile.
It lets you onboard up to three users and provides access to all of the platform’s essential features, including templates, all views and reporting features (except for Gantt Charts), team collaboration, and more.
If you need more users, storage, and a few extra features, there are four paid plans to choose from:
- Team: $10/user per month, includes everything in Free, plus unlimited users and projects, Gantt charts, AI features, etc.
- Professional: $25/user per month, includes everything in Team, and adds more automation runs, advanced roles and permissions, and more.
- Enterprise: $35/user per month, includes everything in Professional, plus more advanced security.
- Signature: A customized plan tailored to your organization’s needs and team size with no predefined limits.
If you want to try SmartSuite’s paid plans before subscribing, there’s also a 14-day free trial.
2. Jira
Jira is a well-known platform for Agile product development teams with its customizable workflows, Scrum and Kanban boards, and deep integration with development tools.
Top Features
- Comprehensive Scrum and Kanban boards with rich reporting capabilities.
- Visual roadmaps for planning project milestones.
- Powerful reporting tools like burndown charts and velocity reports make it stand out from Jira competitors.
Pricing
Jira’s pricing offers a free forever plan for up to 10 users.
The platform offers unlimited projects, goals, tasks, and forms, reports and dashboards, up to 100 automations per month, and more.
Bigger teams can subscribe to one of three paid plans (pricing per seat depends on the number of seats you’d need):
- Standard: $7.53/user/mo for 300 users, includes everything in Free, plus user roles and permissions, more automations, etc.
- Premium: $13.53/user/mo for 300 users, everything in Standard, plus AI features, more customization options, and automations.
- Enterprise: Custom pricing, everything in Premium, plus more advanced security and custom automation rules.
Note: The more team members you onboard, the lower the per-user price, as is the case for every Atlassian product like Trello.
3. Trello
Trello is a project management platform known for its simplistic Kanban boards, drag-and-drop functionality, and generous free plan.
The platform keeps task management simple and effective, making it the perfect choice for small teams or startu-ps just starting out with Agile.
Top Features
- Intuitive Kanban boards for tracking tasks visually, making it perfect for smaller organizations and start-ups.
- Lets you automate repetitive tasks via its Butler automation assistant.
- Collaboration tools for your team members, including comments and file sharing.
Pricing
Trello offers a generous free plan of its project management platform that includes automation features and up to 10 seats.
You can choose from three paid plans to get access to the platform’s more advanced features:
- Standard: Starts from $5 per user/month and adds unlimited activity log and 250 workspace command runs/month.
- Premium: Starts from $10 per user/month and adds unlimited workspace collaborators and built-in automation.
- Enterprise: Starts from $17.50 per user/month for 50 users and includes 24/7 enterprise admin support and SAML SSO via Atlassian Access.
Note: On the Enterprise plan, you get a per-seat discount for the more users you bring to the platform.
Next Steps For Agile Teams: Get Started With SmartSuite For Free
Whether you’re managing sprints, tracking dependencies, or ensuring effective team communication, SmartSuite offers an all-in-one platform to keep your Agile projects on track and deliver results efficiently.
Our platform offers just the right customization, native collaboration capabilities and a library of 200+ project management templates to help you create and maintain a project management workflow.
Here’s what's in it for your team when you try SmartSuite:
- Access to a generous free plan with features including multi-board views (Kanban, Chart, Map, Timeline, Card, and Calendar), 100 automations/month, and 40+ field types, including formula and linked record fields.
- No-code automation builder to set up to 500,000 trigger/action workflows.
- Built-in productivity tools, including time tracking, status tracking, and checklists.
- Team collaboration and planning tools such as whiteboards and SmartSuite docs.
- Resource management across projects and teams.
- 40+ field types, including the option to add your custom fields.
Sign up for a free plan to test the water or get a 14-day free trial to explore all its amazing features.
Or, if you’d like to talk to our team of experts, schedule a demo.
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