Succeeding in an increasingly Agile world

Abstract

Purpose As Agile management thinking spreads to every part and every kind of organization, including their competitors, corporate leaders need to take steps to ensure they get and keep a good seat at the Agile table. Design/methodology/approach The author’s first hand research finds that firms are learning the hard way that software process and value innovation requires a different way of running the organization to be successful. The whole firm has to become nimble, adaptable and able to adjust on the fly to meet the shifting whims of a marketplace driven by dynamic changes in customer value. Findings The Agile way of working is provoking a revolution in business that affects almost everyone. Agile organizations are connecting everyone and everything, everywhere, all the time. They are capable of delivering instant, intimate, frictionless value on a large scale. Practical implications Examples of the new way of running organizations are everywhere apparent. It’s not just the five biggest firms by market capitalization: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft. It’s also firms like Airbnb, Etsy, Lyft, Menlo Innovations, Netflix, Saab, Samsung, Spotify, Tesla, Uber and Warby Parker. Social implications A new kind of management was needed to enable this new kind of worker -- a fundamentally different way of running organizations. Agile is economically more productive and a better fit with the new marketplace. And it had immense potential benefit for the human spirit. It could create workplaces that enabled human beings to contribute their full talents on something worthwhile and meaningful – creating value for other human beings. Originality/value Continuing the management practices and structures of the lumbering industrial giants of the 20th Century is no longer a viable option for today’s firms. To survive, let alone thrive, leaders today must recognize that Agile is not something happening in software alone.