Forget the Buzzword: Agile is About Everyday Practice

In the arts, things change fast. Audiences, funders, teams, programmes: they’re all moving parts. That’s something I learned early on working in venues, festivals, and across different roles. It’s not new, and it’s not going anywhere.

Agile working often gets wrapped up in tech-world language. But really, it’s about something simple: how we connect with people, how we learn, how we reflect, and how we put things into practice. It’s not complicated: it’s human.

At Ticketsolve, we try to create space for that through how we work internally, how we build our products, and how we support our customers. Agile isn’t a process we follow because someone said it’s best practice. It’s something we’ve found helps us work better, communicate better, and make better decisions, for our team and for the organisations we support.

This post shares some of what I’ve learned moving between the arts and SaaS, and explores why small, practical shifts in how we work can make a real difference.

Agile Is Already Part of Arts Organisations (Even if You Don’t Call It That)

Before joining Ticketsolve, I spent over a decade in arts organisations: venues, festivals, marketing, programming, operations. One thing’s always been true: arts people are natural problem-solvers. We're already adapting, responding, tweaking, testing, reviewing. Whether it’s an evolving programme, changing audience needs, or unexpected budget shifts, agility is built into how the sector survives.

At Ticketsolve, we use agile methods every day:

• Department stand ups to ensure that projects keep progressing
• Retrospectives to look back and see what worked (and what didn’t)
• Built in ways of providing feedback - whether that’s from customers or colleagues, - to keep us aligned.
• Collaboration between teams: customer success, support, development, marketing, leadership…

Sure, we have structures in place, but humans are at the centre of all of these. It may be cliché, but Agile isn’t necessarily about working harder, more about working smarter. 

The Small Practices That Make a Big Difference

Agile ways of working don’t have to change your entire way of working, or require you to put in entirely new structures or processes. Smaller habits that can be agile too, helping teams become more resilient and ultimately, to thrive. Here are a few ideas: 

Tools That Make Collaboration Easy: At Ticketsolve, tools like Slack, Notion, Trello and our own Projects feature help us to keep communication open and priorities visible. They reduce friction, make conversations quicker, and help us stay aligned. Even something as simple as clearer meeting notes or regular informal check-ins can unlock better collaboration.

Listening as Standard: Agile thrives on feedback, and so does Ticketsolve. We’ve built mechanisms into our system that allow customers to submit ideas, share feedback, and help shape product developments. We’ve seen the same in the arts: post-show surveys, audience panels, collaborative programming decisions. Listening doesn’t just help you improve: it helps you stay connected.

Automate Where You Can: We lean on tools like Zapier and Ticketsolve’s own automations to reduce manual work. Surveys, check-ins, feedback capture, all things that can run quietly in the background, freeing up human energy for the work that matters most.

Lessons from Bridging Arts and Tech

What’s struck me moving from arts to tech is how similar the challenges are. Whether you’re planning a season of events or developing a new feature, these principles hold true:

As you can see, these aren’t grand strategies, they’re more like everyday habits. And they’re habits we actively encourage within Ticketsolve because we’ve seen the difference they make.

The Reality Check

Agile working isn’t always easy. It asks people to be open, to reflect, to change. It takes time, trust, and a willingness to be a little bit vulnerable. But what I’ve seen - both within Ticketsolve and across the arts sector - is that when people do embrace these habits, things get easier. Decisions get clearer. Workflows get smoother. Teams get stronger.

Agile isn’t about being perfect. It’s about making space for change, learning, and progress.

One Small Step to Get Started

Agile doesn’t have to start big. Here’s a few things to try:

• Connect with someone outside your usual network 
• Reflect on one decision you could make differently.
• Learn something small and share it with your team.
• Make one  tweak to a routine task and see if it makes life easier.