Organizational Agility

by Aaron Monroe

As a voracious consumer of information, I spend many of my waking hours reading and researching a number of topics, most of which have to do with Lean, Agile, or Technology. Not only is it critical that I stay up to speed on these topics, but I’m also fascinated by the rapidly decreasing space between Business and Technology strategies.

These are exciting times for those of us in the Lean-Agile space. What was kickstarted by a group of Development Managers at the Snowbird Ski Resort in Utah (or, if you go back a little further, an article in the January 1986 issue of Harvard Business Review) has snowballed into a full-fledged movement, with many companies choosing to introduce Lean or Agile practices to their organization in an effort to solve operational challenges and position their company for growth. Gone are the days when technology concerns focused primarily on hardware or simple technology capabilities—these days, the concerns of CEOs, COOs, and CIOs often overlap, focusing instead on how technology can be developed into a strategic differentiator. From the Board Room to the Break Room, Agility is a hot topic.

With these developments in mind, I came across two surveys over the past few weeks that pushed me to think in a unique way about the motivations for a Lean-Agile transformation. The first is a study done by the Society for Information Management (published in the October 2015 issue of Forbes Magazine) on the top CIO concerns for 2016. The list is as follows:

1. Technology Alignment with the Business
2. Security and Privacy
3. Speed of IT Delivery and Time-to-Market
4. Innovation
5. Business Productivity and Efficiency
6. IT Value Proposition to the Business
7. IT Agility and Flexibility
8. IT Cost Reduction and Controls
9. Business Agility and Flexibility
10. Business Cost Reduction and Controls

Outside of Security and Privacy, all of the other concerns on this list can be resolved or mitigated through improved Organizational Agility, which in many ways is an intersection of Lean Thinking and Agile Delivery. The tools, techniques, frameworks, and methodologies that can be applied to improve Organizational Agility are vast and well-proven. While Lean Thinking has continuously reshaped the automotive industry to produce better and better results, Agile practices have successfully reshaped the way software is delivered.

While I disagree with the author’s overall solution of IT decentralization to address CIO concerns, I do agree that there remains a growing need for technologists to partner closely with their business peers to solve key business challenges.

A few days later, I came across the 9^th Annual State of Agile Survey conducted by VersionOne which confirmed that more and more leaders are driving increased Organizational Agility as a way to strengthen the partnership between technologists and their business peers, rather than decentralizing IT. Here are a few key points drawn from VersionOne’s survey:

• 94% of all organizations surveyed now practice Agile, and 35% of respondents were in organizations of more than 5,000 people, while 20% of respondents were in organizations of more than 20,000 people.
• Many respondents were practicing Agile at scale. The number one tip for scaling Agile successfully is having consistent process and practices (42%). Executive sponsorship (40%) came in a close second.
• When asked why their companies began practicing Agile, survey respondents listed the following as the top ten goals and priorities of their companies in making this decision:

1. Accelerate product delivery (59%)
2. Enhance ability to manage changing priorities (56%)
3. Increase productivity (53%)
4. Enhance software quality (46%)
5. Enhance delivery predictability (44%)
6. Improve business/IT alignment (40%)
7. Improve project visibility (40%)
8. Reduce project risk (38%)
9. Improve team morale (26%)
10. Improve engineering discipline (25%)

As you think about your 2016 challenges, bear the results of these two surveys in mind. Whether you are a technologist or business partner, the challenges that await you in 2016 cannot be solved alone. They require a closer partnership between business and technology, as well as an evaluation of the Organizational Agility techniques that can make you more successful.

Clearly, there is direct correlation between the concerns of CIOs in 2016 and the solutions Organizational Agility can provide. There is no question that in our current business climate, the companies who respond to their customer’s needs the most quickly and effectively will win the day.

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Aaron Monroe will be running training courses on Lean-Agile at BRMConnect! Click here for more information!