Adopting the latest agile tools and practices won't be enough to respond to rapid market change. Leaders must first lay the groundwork by creating the right environment for these tools to work. Many managers struggle to install the underlying organizational operating system for business agility. High-performing agile organizations depend on the strength of six key enabling factors: leadership, culture, structure, people, governance, and ways of working. This book explains why these factors are important and how they work together to increase organizational agility. Real-world examples, stories, and tools will help leaders get realistic about the scope of changes needed in their organizations and show them how to get started. Karim Harbott does not offer a book of recipes. Instead, he focuses on mindset, principles, and general patterns. This book summarizes of the most important factors in increasing organizational agility and why they work, which leaders will need to consider in a so-called agile transformation. Because every organization is different, each will have its own route to agility and high performance. Managers will need to tackle all the areas that are crucial to creating an environment in which any chosen approach can work.
Adopting the latest agile tools and practices won't be enough to respond to rapid market change. Leaders must first lay the groundwork by creating the right environment for these tools to work. Many managers struggle to install the underlying organizational operating system for business agility. High-performing agile organizations depend on the strength of six key enabling factors: leadership, culture, structure, people, governance, and ways of working. This book explains why these factors are important and how they work together to increase organizational agility. Real-world examples, stories, and tools will help leaders get realistic about the scope of changes needed in their organizations and show them how to get started. Karim Harbott does not offer a book of recipes. Instead, he focuses on mindset, principles, and general patterns. This book summarizes of the most important factors in increasing organizational agility and why they work, which leaders will need to consider in a so-called agile transformation. Because every organization is different, each will have its own route to agility and high performance. Managers will need to tackle all the areas that are crucial to creating an environment in which any chosen approach can work.
Adopting the latest agile tools and practices won’t be enough to respond to rapid market change. Leaders must first lay the groundwork by creating the right environment for these tools to work. Many managers struggle to install the underlying organizational operating system for business agility. High-performing agile organizations depend on the strength of six key enabling factors: leadership, culture, structure, people, governance, and ways of working. This book explains why these factors are important and how they work together to increase organizational agility. Real-world examples, stories, and tools will help leaders get realistic about the scope of changes needed in their organizations and show them how to get started. Karim Harbott does not offer a book of recipes. Instead, he focuses on mindset, principles, and general patterns. This book summarizes of the most important factors in increasing organizational agility and why they work, which leaders will need to consider in a so-called agile transformation. Because every organization is different, each will have its own route to agility and high performance. Managers will need to tackle all the areas that are crucial to creating an environment in which any chosen approach can work.
This balanced guide to agility gets past the hype and frustration to help frustrated leaders transform their agile transformations. Agile transformations are supposed to make organizations modern, competitive, and relevant. But in the well-intentioned effort to move into the future, change leaders find themselves frustrated by pushback, limited impact, poor practices, and unfair criticism. What's going on? Jesse Fewell's book cuts through the “quick-fix” hype of agile theory and explains a recurring transformational pattern that unpacks what holds organizations back. The boost is the initial gains from logical first steps; the barrier is the unavoidable roadblock that must come next; and the rebound is the way forward to further gains by leaning against the concept of the original boost. With these counterintuitive rebounds, Fewell identifies seven leadership moves that can be used to unblock stalled agile transformations. No, your transformation is not a failure. It turns out the buy-in, the talent, the alignment, and the growth you need to break through are already in front of you; it's all simply hidden under the surface—undiscovered, unutilized, and untapped.
Agile has the power to transform work--but only if it's implemented the right way. For decades business leaders have been painfully aware of a huge chasm: They aspire to create nimble, flexible enterprises. But their day-to-day reality is silos, sluggish processes, and stalled innovation. Today, agile is hailed as the essential bridge across this chasm, with the potential to transform a company and catapult it to the head of the pack. Not so fast. In this clear-eyed, indispensable book, Bain & Company thought leader Darrell Rigby and his colleagues Sarah Elk and Steve Berez provide a much-needed reality check. They dispel the myths and misconceptions that have accompanied agile's rise to prominence--the idea that it can reshape an organization all at once, for instance, or that it should be used in every function and for all types of work. They illustrate that agile teams can indeed be powerful, making people's jobs more rewarding and turbocharging innovation, but such results are possible only if the method is fully understood and implemented the right way. The key, they argue, is balance. Every organization must optimize and tightly control some of its operations, and at the same time innovate. Agile, done well, enables vigorous innovation without sacrificing the efficiency and reliability essential to traditional operations. The authors break down how agile really works, show what not to do, and explain the crucial importance of scaling agile properly in order to reap its full benefit. They then lay out a road map for leading the transition to a truly agile enterprise. Agile isn't a goal in itself; it's a means to becoming a high-performance operation. Doing Agile Right is a must-have guide for any company trying to make the transition--or trying to sustain high agility.
Despite the astonishing technological developments in our times, it is surprising how little has changed in the way organizations are structured and managed. However, organizations are finally changing as they embark on agile transformations. Agility concepts emerged from the dynamics of project management and have evolved as they are being applied to organizational structure and operations. This phase of the agile evolution is known as enterprise agility. Filled with real-world scenarios and company case studies, Enterprise Agility: A Practical Guide to Agile Business Management covers the evolution of agility, including applied processes, lessons learned and realized outcomes. The book starts with the initial phase of the agile evolution, project agility and describes how waterfall project management is transformed into scrum, which can have positive effects on project timelines, scope and budget, as well as team motivation. The second phase of agility, organizational agility, is the evolution of the agile principles from temporary projects to permanent organizational structures. The book explains the main components of organizational agility, including structures, roles and ways of organizing work. It emphasizes the advantages of transitioning from traditional organizational management to agile. Finally, the latest phase, enterprise agility, transforms each function of the organization. The book acts as a guide and describes the change through the lens of each managerial domain (sales, marketing, HR, finance etc.) and by presenting the positive impact generated on the company’s overall performance based on case studies. The last chapter illustrates the enablers of this transformation and how they can help the change to be internalized so that the enterprises realize improvements. The book is based on the author’s over 15 years of experience of supporting more than 25 companies in varied sectors on their transformational journey, with the last 5 years concentrating on agility. By combining business management trends and principles of agile business development, it shows managers how to lead the transformation to enterprise agility by following the path from project agility to full enterprise agility.
"This is one of the most important Agile books since The Phoenix Project." —Charles Betz, Principle Analyst, Forrester Research It's no secret that we are living in the Digital Age. Technology companies make up seven of the world's ten largest firms by market capitalization. And the key to their success is the key to all modern organizations. Jonathan Smart, business agility practitioner, thought leader, and coach, reveals the patterns and antipatterns that will help organizations from every industry deliver better value sooner, safer, and happier through high levels of engagement, inclusion, and empowerment. Through his decades of experience in the technology world, Smart provides business leaders with a blueprint for creating a world-class organization of the future. Through Agile and Lean ways of working, business leaders can empower teams to improve production, grow together, and create better services for their customers. These better ways of working have overflowed from the IT department to every corner of successful organizations, taking root in every industry from aerospace to accounting, insurance to shipping. This book is not about software development. It is not a book about the computer industry. This book is about applying agility across the entire organization. It's a book that will put you at the front of change and ahead of the competition. "A true business-wide perspective on Digital Transformation and the need for whole business agility." —Adam Banks, Non Executive Director and Former CTIO of AP Moller Maersk **Note from the Authors: Purchases will result in the planting of trees and empowerment of women, in countries with the lowest scores on the IUCN's gender and environment index. It's not just carbon neutral, purchases in any format will result in, on average, 10x greater carbon offset.
Enterprise Agility is practical framework for enhancing Agility and equipping your company with the tools to survive. Key Features Prepare your company to navigate the rapidly-moving business world Enhance Agility in every component of your organization Build a framework that meets the unique requirements of your enterprise Book Description The biggest challenge enterprises face today is dealing with fast-paced change in all spheres of business. Enterprise Agility shows how an enterprise can address this challenge head on and thrive in the dynamic environment. Avoiding the mechanistic construction of existing enterprises that focus on predictability and certainty, Enterprise Agility delivers practical advice for responding and adapting to the scale and accelerating pace of disruptive change in the business environment. Agility is a fundamental shift in thinking about how enterprises work to effectively deal with disruptive changes in the business environment. The core belief underlying agility is that enterprises are open and living systems. These living systems, also known as complex adaptive systems (CAS), are ideally suited to deal with change very effectively. Agility is to enterprises what health is to humans. There are some foundational principles that can be broadly applied, but the definition of healthy is very specific to each individual. Enterprise Agility takes a similar approach with regard to agility: it suggests foundational practices to improve the overall health of the body—culture, mindset, and leadership—and the health of its various organs: people, process, governance, structure, technology, and customers. The book also suggests a practical framework to create a plan to enhance agility. What you will learn Drive agility-oriented change across the enterprise Understand why agility matters (more than ever) to modern enterprises Adopt and influence an Agile mindset in your teams and in your organization Understand the concept of a CAS and how to model enterprise and leadership behaviors on CAS characteristics to enhance enterprise agility Understand and convey the differences between Agile and true enterprise agility Create an enterprise-specific action plan to enhance agility Become a champion for enterprise agility Recognize the advantages and challenges of distributed teams, and how Agile ways of working can remedy the rough spots Enable and motivate your IT partners to adopt Agile ways of working Who this book is for Enterprise Agility is a tool for anyone with the motivation to influence outcomes in an enterprise, who aspires to improve Agility. Readers from the following backgrounds will benefit: chief executive officer, chief information officer, people/human resource director, information technology director, head of change program, head of transformation, and Agile coach/consultant.
Effective software teams are essential for any organization to deliver value continuously and sustainably. But how do you build the best team organization for your specific goals, culture, and needs? Team Topologies is a practical, step-by-step, adaptive model for organizational design and team interaction based on four fundamental team types and three team interaction patterns. It is a model that treats teams as the fundamental means of delivery, where team structures and communication pathways are able to evolve with technological and organizational maturity. In Team Topologies, IT consultants Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais share secrets of successful team patterns and interactions to help readers choose and evolve the right team patterns for their organization, making sure to keep the software healthy and optimize value streams. Team Topologies is a major step forward in organizational design for software, presenting a well-defined way for teams to interact and interrelate that helps make the resulting software architecture clearer and more sustainable, turning inter-team problems into valuable signals for the self-steering organization.
Head First Agile is a complete guide to learning real-world agile ideas, practices, principles. What will you learn from this book? In Head First Agile, you'll learn all about the ideas behind agile and the straightforward practices that drive it. You'll take deep dives into Scrum, XP, Lean, and Kanban, the most common real-world agile approaches today. You'll learn how to use agile to help your teams plan better, work better together, write better code, and improve as a team—because agile not only leads to great results, but agile teams say they also have a much better time at work. Head First Agile will help you get agile into your brain... and onto your team! Preparing for your PMI-ACP® certification? This book also has everything you need to get certified, with 100% coverage of the PMI-ACP® exam. Luckily, the most effective way to prepare for the exam is to get agile into your brain—so instead of cramming, you're learning. Why does this book look so different? Based on the latest research in cognitive science and learning theory, Head First Agile uses a visually rich format to engage your mind, rather than a text-heavy approach that puts you to sleep. Why waste your time struggling with new concepts? This multi-sensory learning experience is designed for the way your brain really works.
