Agile approach in a transforming organization, a descriptive study of chosen Polish companies with rapid revenue growth

Abstract

Research background: Recent decades may undoubtedly be deemed as a period of exceptional transformation on a global scale. One element of this transformation is the reorganisation of traditional ways of business management (on all ontological levels). As a result, agile approach is increasingly often considered one of the key aspects of building the competitive advantage of a company. In this paper, agile approach is understood as the businesses' capability of responding promptly to market needs. Purpose of the article: The aim of this paper is to present the research results on the use of agile approach in chosen organizations. More specifically, the main purpose of this article is to describe how organizations are transformed with use of the agile approach. Methods: In accordance with the goal of the article, the organizations selected for empirical research are characterized by revenue increase levels of over 100% (such organizations undergo a dynamic transformation caused by growth), and employment ranging from 10 to 50 employees. The studied companies operate mainly in the IT industry and use technologies to organize the processes of identification and tracking of customer behaviour to a large extent. Several research methods were used in this paper: literature studies, expert interview, participant observation, and Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient. Findings & Value added: The article describes the usage level of the agile (and linear) approach in the organizational transformation (through the dynamic growth of revenues), and presents the agile approach model, which can be used as an accelerator of the business’ development. In addition, the authors undertook the first (limited and unrepresentative) attempt to evaluate the use of agile approach in the context of such indicators as: communication with customers, profit increase, and minimization of the risk related to introducing a new product on the market.