Use of Agile in Military Manufacturing
Business and commerce moves fast, including in defence and public-sector procurement. When budgets are tight and requirements evolve, “big upfront plans” often struggle. This is why some organisations are experimenting with Agile ways of working in high-assurance engineering environments.
Saab’s Gripen E programme is a useful lens for that conversation. Not because defence is “easy”, but because the constraints are real: safety, compliance, long supply chains, and complex integration.
Key takeaways
- Agile in complex manufacturing is about reducing uncertainty, not skipping rigour.
- Break work into smaller, testable increments to expose risk earlier.
- Use short feedback loops with real users (for Saab, pilots and operational staff).
- Prioritisation is a cost-control tool, not just a planning technique.
- Strategic roadmaps still matter, but they stay “living” and evidence-led.
Challenge: why this matters in military procurement
Defence programmes face the perfect storm: long timelines, many stakeholders, heavy governance, and changing needs. Traditional delivery approaches often push discovery and validation late, when change is most expensive.
In the GCC, you see similar dynamics in large government and critical infrastructure programmes: complex procurement routes, multiple vendors, and delivery teams trying to integrate “moving parts” under pressure.
A helpful parallel is how organisations try to scale delivery without losing quality. If you want a practical angle on speeding delivery while keeping control, this companion piece is worth reading: Deliver software faster ↗
Approach: how Agile can work in high-assurance engineering
Agile in this context is less about “going fast” and more about creating clarity and options. The core idea is to reduce batch size, increase learning frequency, and make trade-offs explicit.
Below are the practices that typically make the difference.
1) Manage variability with short horizons and clear increments
Complex engineering work contains unknowns: integration surprises, supplier delays, and emergent performance constraints. Agile handles this by working in shorter cycles, with regular checkpoints against outcomes.
A good pattern is: define a quarterly intent, deliver smaller increments inside it, and treat each increment as a learning event. This increases transparency and reduces late-stage rework.
If your teams struggle with predictable flow and “always nearly done”, you may also find this useful: High-performance delivery habits ↗
2) Prioritise to control cost and focus
Prioritisation is where Agile meets financial reality. You are constantly deciding what to build, what to delay, and what to stop. In manufacturing and defence, that means making trade-offs visible: capability, risk, compliance, and test effort.
This is also why outcome measures matter. If everything is “top priority”, then nothing is. A pragmatic approach is to align delivery goals to measurable outcomes and review them regularly.
For a practical way to connect delivery to measurable business outcomes, see: Using OKRs with Scrum ↗
3) Keep strategic planning, but make it evidence-led
Agile does not remove planning. It changes the planning cadence and the confidence level. The roadmap becomes a living document informed by what teams learn during delivery, testing, and stakeholder review.
In practice, this means you still set direction (capability roadmap, milestones, regulatory gates), but you update forecasts based on evidence rather than optimism.
If you’re leading this kind of change, this guide is a solid reference for setting expectations and avoiding “Agile theatre”: Agile leadership guide ↗
4) Build in continuous improvement, not just delivery
High-assurance environments benefit from continuous improvement because process inefficiency creates quality risk. Regular Retrospectives help teams fix systemic blockers: test automation gaps, handover delays, unclear acceptance criteria, or overloaded governance steps.
If you’re newer to Agile, treat improvement as scheduled engineering work, not an “optional extra”. A small improvement every Sprint compounds quickly over a year.
5) Use modularity and autonomy to enable safer speed
Agile delivery is easier when architecture supports change. Modular systems reduce coupling, which reduces risk and shortens feedback loops. Autonomy matters too: teams that can make local decisions (within clear constraints) move faster and surface issues earlier.
This is one reason “operating model” and procurement design matter. If vendors are locked into rigid scopes and change control is punitive, learning slows down.
A procurement-specific view of how to structure for faster learning is here: Lean-Agile Procurement operating model ↗
Results: what to expect (without hype)
Agile in complex manufacturing won’t magically remove complexity. What it can do is reduce wasted effort and late-stage surprises.
Realistic outcomes to aim for include:
- Earlier risk discovery through smaller integration steps
- Clearer stakeholder alignment through frequent evidence reviews
- Better cost control via ruthless prioritisation and reduced rework
- Improved quality through continuous improvement and stronger validation loops
- Faster decision-making because constraints and trade-offs are explicit
If you’re dealing with slow procurement cycles, unclear requirements, or constant re-prioritisation, this future-facing UAE lens may help: Agile procurement and AI ↗
Practical takeaways: what to do next
If you’re exploring Agile for complex engineering, defence, or regulated environments, start with a few controlled moves.
- Define a clear product goal and a small set of measurable outcomes.
- Break work into increments that can be validated, not just “built”.
- Agree governance gates up front, then keep delivery cycles short inside them.
- Make prioritisation visible and repeat it on a set cadence.
- Run Scrum Events (aka Ceremonies) properly: decisions and learning, not status theatre.
- Invest in test strategy and automation early to reduce release pain.
- Treat improvement items as first-class backlog work, not “nice to have”.
If your biggest issue is people, not process, you may find this useful when onboarding or stabilising teams: Onboard new team members ↗
Related training
If you want to build capability quickly (without turning Agile into theatre), these are the two most relevant programmes for complex delivery environments:
Agile in defence and complex manufacturing is not about ignoring governance. It’s about creating shorter learning loops inside the reality of governance, so risk is exposed earlier and teams can make better decisions.
If you’re tackling complex delivery in the UAE, KSA, or wider GCC—especially where procurement and vendor models slow learning—there are practical ways to adapt Agile without losing control.
Contact us
Book a 30-minute diagnostic call ↗
