Agile: stay ahead in a volatile world

The 5 principles of agility and agile organizations

Companies that are agile share some characteristics:

• Early and regular deliveries in a development or short lead times in a service or production

• Inspect and adapt - to learn, to gather data and to respond to learnings and new things

• Transparency in order to be able to make decisions together

• Cadence to bring work into a rhythm

• Empowerment and self-management to enable quick decision-making across the organization in dynamic environments
  

What are the good reasons to establish agility in your organization?

Today, markets change quickly. Be it because the general conditions or customer requirements are changing. This is nothing new, but it affects us permanently. Innovation cycles are cut in half every two years - and have been for quite a long time. That's why it's important to regularly renew methods and techniques in order to stay ahead in a world full of surprises. Agility is the state of the art, so to speak. Used correctly, it makes your company dynamically robust in a volatile world.

How do you make the move from using agile methods to an agile organization?

Using Agile methods does not make an organization as a whole Agile. But it is a good start on which you can build. Agile ways of working are best tested in teams. Decision-making paths are short and social complexity is manageable. Once agile proves itself in teams, the question quickly becomes: how do you get that multiplied? And how do you deal with an organization that often still follows other working principles? This is where agile transformation starts - the journey from individual agile teams to an agile enterprise. This means an organizational development in which you use agile ways of working, which have proven themselves in teams, also for coordination between teams or at the management level.

How do you start with agility, what are the most important steps and how long does something like this take anyway?

The first step towards an agile organization needs volunteers. Ideally, there should be several teams that have experienced agility and want to apply agile principles. Teams should be build around a common value stream, where it makes sense to work together. This can be e.g. a project (e.g., developing a new e-car), a product (e.g., supporting and developing a camera line), or in a corporate function (e.g., IT). Teams develop a vision of how they can work in an Agile way, selecting from the many Agile frameworks one that works best for them. In addition to early adopters, a change team can pave the way from team agility to coporate agility..

How do you win over the management for the topic of agility and how do you succeed in involving all employees?

If management also adopts and selects Agile frameworks that are useful for their tasks, agility can also deliver the benefits of focus, speed and responsiveness to management work. The same holds true for teams, Let’s start with volunteers and create good work situations with real added value. That way, you'll gradually get everyone else on board, too.

Why is wibas the right partner at your side for the introduction of agility?

We are pioneers of agility. We know agile organizations of all kinds of sizes and fields – from small to medium-sized businesses to Dax corporations, from IT to retail. We are masters of agile work at all levels: from the team to the board of directors. And do change management that combines systematic and at the same time systemic transformation. That's a cool combination of openness and structuredness. Both are not a contradiction, but it’s combination is agility applied to organizational development. Authentic consulting is especially important to us: with us, you experience agility and an agile mindset from the first day you work with us.