unleashing the power of agile: organization design ... · scrum, scaled agile framework (safe))....

Unleashing the Power of Agile: Organization Design Implications

A GUIDE FOR THE C-SUITE EXECUTIVE

Unleashing the Power of Agile: Organization Design Implications: A Guide for the C-Suite Executive2

AlignOrg Solutions is a consulting firm that specializes in helping clients clarify strategy, design and align organization systems and choices, and lead transformational change to drive growth and marketplace success. Using our powerful methodology and a flexible approach that engages leaders and employees in decision-making, we assist many of the most well-respected and successful organizations around the world with achieving real, transformational change. The expertise we bring is grounded in the practical realities of everyday business challenges and is designed to create insight and action.

To learn more about AlignOrg Solutions and our work and thinking, please visit www.alignorg.com.

Copyright © 2017 All rights reserved. Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.


Table of Contents

4 Introduction

6 Chapter 1: Why Are Agile Approaches Distinctive and Appealing?

9 Chapter 2: How Do You Use Agile Principles in Organization Design?

13 Chapter 3: How Do You Lead an Agile Organization Transformation?

16 Chapter 4: What Does an Agile Organization Transformation Journey Look Like?

18 Chapter 5: How Do I Get Started?

22 Conclusion


Agile frameworks are gaining popularity as an alternative to more traditional product development and project management practices. As they rise in popularity and demonstrate increases in productivity and success1, many executives are asking themselves how they can use Agile to improve their businesses.

However, despite its growing popularity (especially among software developers), Agile is still very much in its infancy. Many business functions and areas have yet to experiment with it and determine its usefulness or applicability. While the software industry has used Agile for more than a decade, it remains far from a mainstream framework for all business areas and companies. For executives, this provides great opportunities to differentiate their business through Agile as well as a new path they must forge.

This Guide provides a glimpse into how Agile principles can be used beyond software and product development in the field of organization design. AlignOrg Solutions has been using Agile principles in our organization design practice for the past 25 years. Of course, when we started we didn’t call them Agile principles. As Agile has emerged and grown in acceptance, we quickly saw correlations between Agile and organization design done the “AlignOrg” way. On the surface, many of our Agile organization design practices do not look like their software

or product development counterparts, yet they still run parallel and in-line with the principles of Agile and perfectly coincide with the original Agile Manifesto (we’ll talk more about that later).

We believe that adherence to these principles is one of the many things that has differentiated our approach to organization design. And, it is why we believe that more and more organizations should consider ways to incorporate Agile principles into how they work.

1 See Scruminc.com

INTRODUCTION

Agile isn’t a slogan or poster on the wall. It is a new way of working that fundamentally changes how work is organized, approached, resourced, and delivered.

https://www.scruminc.com/


IMAGINE THE BENEFITS FOR COMPANIES THAT COULD:

q Markedly improve productivity and speed of decision making

q Unleash the creative energy of their talent

q Accelerate the speed of implementation (and thus reduce the time to results)

These benefits won’t come easily, but by understanding Agile principles and good organization design practices, executives can lead their organizations on a journey to achieve extraordinary results.


Why Are Agile Approaches Distinctive and Appealing?Since the creation of Agile, many have created frameworks, operating models, and approaches that claim to help leverage Agile principles. Many of these frameworks have been incredibly successful in improving efficiency, effectiveness, and the quality of the work produced (e.g., Scrum, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)). However, executives exploring Agile as a solution for their company should not confuse these tools and frameworks with Agile principles themselves.

To get the most out of Agile, executives must understand its core principles. So, what are the core principles of Agile? And, how do you separate that from the frameworks and techniques that surround it?

The principles of Agile are extremely straightforward. In 2001, a group of software development leaders developed the “Agile Manifesto.” The Manifesto is short and concise with four working principles:

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.2

2 See agilemanifesto.org

Individuals and interactions Over processes and tools

Working software Over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration Over contract negotiation

Responding to change Over following a plan

CHAPTER 1

http://agilemanifesto.org/


Companies and consultants have built numerous frameworks and approaches to leverage these powerful principles. Because no one approach or framework carries all the benefits of Agile, organizations and leaders need to understand these principles and build, adopt, or adapt the frameworks and approaches that will work best for them. Executives that understand the Agile principles underlying these frameworks are better equipped to evaluate the effectiveness of different frameworks for their organization. Additionally, executives should understand that Agile has no methodology (nor is this executive guide an attempt to establish one). As seen above, Agile is merely a set of principles stated in the Manifesto and different frameworks are more successful in certain applications than others. What works for software development, for example, may not work for a back-office function like customer service even though Agile ways of working have been incorporated.

However, there are some frameworks that have gained more traction and proven to be more successful than others. For example, “Scrum” is a methodology that Agile co-founder, Jeff Sutherland, has developed that essentially eliminates the traditional “waterfall” method of software/product development in favor of his more iterative and flexible solution.

Sutherland has been very influential in the Agile community to the point that many use Scrum and Agile synonymously and with good reason. Sutherland claims that Scrum is 300% more effective than waterfall methods and most frameworks draw parallels to Sutherland’s work.3 While Scrum is still a framework that operates within the principles of Agile, this executive guide will also draw parallels between many Scrum principles and those that we use in our Agile organization design approach.

Since it is difficult to have a conversation about Agile without involving Scrum, let’s take a look at Scrum from a high level.

3 See Scruminc.com



In the simplest form, Scrum is a way to mobilize small teams (six people plus or minus two) to iteratively develop products that fit customer needs, to remain flexible to market/customer changes, and to help teams become as effective as possible. In Scrum, teams work on a set number of projects and tasks in “sprints” that take anywhere from one week to a month to complete. What projects a team will work on is determined by the product owner, but how the team will accomplish the projects and tasks and how many a team can do during a given sprint is up to the team.

In addition to team members and the product owner, there is also a “Scrum Master” whose primary responsibilities include facilitating meetings and clearing impediments or roadblocks to team productivity.

In Scrum, teams meet constantly: at the beginning of the sprint to determine the sprint’s scope, daily to review progress, and at the end of a sprint to review results with stakeholders. In this way, teams are both developing products in an iterative fashion, and also disseminating the “finished products” as they develop the solutions.

Scrum has demonstrated the power of Agile principles to increase production speed, effectiveness, and flexibility, delivering products (software and others) on time and customized for individual customer needs. But, what does this mean for organization design? Can we leverage the principles of Agile and Scrum to yield a similar result to the success demonstrated in software design and development?

We think so! At AlignOrg Solutions, we have been using Agile principles for the last 25 years, long before the Agile Manifesto. The remaining chapters explore some of our learnings from using Agile principles and provide a guide for how to do organization design in an Agile way (and perhaps over time build an Agile organization).

While organization design and software development are quite different, we have found that Agile principles still very much apply and produce quick, customer-centric, and flexible results.


How Do You Use Agile Principles in Organization Design?Organizations need someone that assumes the “Chief Alignment Officer” role.4 This Alignment Leader helps connect the organization’s ways of working, structures, roles, talent, metrics, and culture to the organization’s strategy. If Agile ways of working can enhance the delivery of a company’s strategy, those principles and capabilities must show up in the organization’s design.

To understand the benefit of Agile for organization design, it helps to first understand the product(s) an organization design produces. Organization design is not just about creating an organization chart.5 An effective organization is a manifestation of the collective logic of the organization’s leaders about how the organization is set-up to deliver results. For example, if the leaders in a business believe that customers have unique preferences or needs in different geographies, then the organization should be set up to deliver its products or services locally. Thus, to operate in a more agile way, leaders must devise an organization design that changes how people think and act quickly and iteratively while increasing focus on customer collaboration and individual’s interactions.

That is a tall order and it may be hard for some to see how Agile can help. Especially in large organizations, changing collective thinking and actions can prove challenging, time consuming, and difficult to break into smaller tasks as recommended by typical Agile frameworks. So, how can Agile organization design speed things up and make the task more manageable?

4 See Mastering the Cube, pg. 35 See Mastering the Cube, ch. 1

CHAPTER 2

http://alignorg.com/library/resource/mastering-the-cube/



The solution lies in leveraging some of the common Agile practices popularized by our product/software development counterparts and flexed to meet organization design needs. Some of the most important include the following:

1. THE SPRINT. Sprints lie at the heart of Agile (and Scrum). At AlignOrg Solutions, we regularly utilize sprints (or design sessions as we call them) to divide the work into smaller incremental steps. A design session allows a small group to work in a concentrated way to complete very specific business or organizational objectives. This enables organizations and leaders to respond to market and customer changes without having to “start all over,” saving valuable time and money.

Additionally, design sessions help focus the work on a few initiatives rather than trying to do everything at once. All too often, business leaders can feel overwhelmed by the number of activities necessary to create change. Design sessions help prioritize the work and the design choices of the organization so that resources and decision making is focused on smaller, yet more strategic chunks increasing implementation success. It also helps avoid spending money on a design only to feel too overwhelmed by the amount of change necessary to actually implement it.

2. TRANSPARENT COMMUNICATION. Like Scrum (see chapter one), successful design sessions are preceded and punctuated with quick meetings to “inspect and evaluate” the organization design. At the end of each design session, teams share out the results with stakeholders, leaders, and employees to elicit feedback and improve the design in real-time.

Because design sessions (sprints) are highly collaborative, utilizing a variety of leaders, front-line employees, and even external stakeholders from time to time, communication and understanding happens within the flow of work rather than orchestrating it after the fact. High involvement for design sessions from across the organization helps enable clear, more transparent communication and spread the change and buy-in from the very beginning.


3. CASCADING STAKEHOLDER/CUSTOMER INVOLVEMENT. Just like in Agile, design happens in iterations from the broad, strategic design considerations to the more detailed, operational issues and choices. We distinguish between macro organization alignment and micro organization alignment. The team participants for the strategic, macro design questions are often quite different from the stakeholders needed to flesh out the micro design.

As design moves from the macro to the micro level, the stakeholders and customers involved change and move down the organization pyramid. True to Agile principles, trusted customers and key stakeholders should remain involved throughout an organization design to ensure that designs are aligned, relevant, and differentiated from top to bottom. High outside involvement also facilitates the overall organization transformation, minimizes change management needs and speeds up the organization design process as it cascades down the organization.

4. TEAM AUTONOMY. Although there are many ways Agile improves organization design, the last one addressed in this guide revolves around team autonomy, focusing on “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.”6 As we’ve seen, good design sessions utilize a variety of people from throughout the organization. To be effective, executives and leaders must allow design session participants an equal voice, encouraging the group to come up with its own solutions through healthy debate and consensus.

Leaders have a distinct role in the process (we will talk more about that later) to define the objectives of the team and provide design criteria to guide decision making. Suffice it to say Alignment Leaders must trust team members to come up with intelligent, aligned solutions that will resonate with customers and differentiate the company in the market. To create the best and most Agile solutions, there is no substitute for getting the right people in the room rather than relying solely on processes, tools, or off-the-shelf solutions.

While Agile may not look the same in organization design as it does in software development, both follow many of the

same principles and can yield similar results. As executives think about their role as Alignment Leaders for their organization—guiding their company through organization design efforts and

6 See Agile Manifesto

Organizations are Exploring How to Change Traditional Ways of Working

An Agile Organization is one in which leaders have thoughtfully and intentionally embedded Agile principles into the ways the organization works. They also adopt new cultural dimensions that can be appealing like accelerated decision making, rapid learning and innovation, and cross-organizational engagement.



ensuring strategic differentiation is achieved quickly, Agile principles are a powerful ally in responding to the market needs, increasing overall speed to decision making, and maximizing effectiveness and efficiency.

Using an Agile organization design approach or framework is great, but will that automatically lead to an Agile organization? Not necessarily. Becoming an Agile organization requires the thoughtful design and alignment of many organization choices. Using an Agile organization design approach, executives can think through how to incorporate Agile ways of working into their organization and culture. At AlignOrg Solutions, we use a Rubik’s Cube analogy to describe the coordinated and systematic process of syncing up all aspects of an organization to drive results. Just like how a Rubik’s Cube must have all six sides aligned, an organization needs to have work, structure, metrics, people/rewards, and culture choices lined up to get results. Let’s explore how executives can transform their organizations and culture into one that is more Agile and effective.

We often help teams think more systemically by relating the different systems to the six sides of a Rubik’s cube. Each side represents a different system: work/processes, structure, information/metrics, people/rewards, continuous improvement, and culture/leadership.


How Do You Lead an Agile Organization Transformation?Leaders can find it challenging to create a deep-rooted change that takes hold within their organization. Agile is no exception. Leadership (sponsorship) is key to any significant organizational change such as incorporating Agile ways of working into your organization. If support for Agile principles is limited, the organization will have a difficult time gaining traction, yielding better results, and penetrating the established culture. So, how do you garner the much-needed support for more Agile design and thinking?

In addition to the Alignment Leader notion we introduced earlier, we also suggest in our book, Mastering the Cube, that Change Partners should aide Alignment Leaders. Change Partners are practitioners (internal or external) that bring know-how, tools, and proven approaches to help leaders set-up, guide, and successfully implement an organization transformation. While Agile

CHAPTER 3

While Agile principles have the power to improve the efficiency, quality, and success of an organization’s ways of working, you need a champion—an Alignment Leader—partnered with a Change Partner to help the organization undertake the heavy-lifting of redesigning the organization, implementing new patterns, and creating a culture that will embrace Agile principles.



principles have the power to improve the efficiency, quality, and success of an organization’s ways of working, you need a champion—an Alignment Leader—partnered with a Change Partner to help the organization undertake the heavy-lifting of redesigning the organization, implementing new patterns, and creating a culture that will embrace Agile principles.

So, how do you identify an Alignment Leader? Or, perhaps more importantly, become one yourself? The following lists some of the tenets of a good Alignment Leader:

q USE QUESTIONS. Rather than make statements about what should be done, Alignment Leaders are masters at asking the right questions. These questions should help the entire team achieve mutual understanding, discover alternatives, and refine the problems at hand.

q IMPROVE FLOW. Much like a Product Leader and a Scrum Master, an Alignment Leader and their Change Partner help the design team stay focused on the project at hand without getting distracted. Rather than stop the flow of work to fix a potential problem or worry, an Alignment Leader helps remove impediments without stopping the flow of work. Essentially, they help improve the team’s speed by keeping them focused and address impediments before they stop the work.

q TRUST THE TEAM. A good Alignment Leader empowers his/her team by supporting their recommendations, decisions, and work processes. This vital support and trust can pay big dividends in production speed, burnout prevention, and employee satisfaction.

q GET INVOLVED. Leaders that stay involved throughout the life of a project validate the work with their interest and presence. If you want to validate Agile and help it succeed, a good Alignment Leader will show up, participate when possible, ask questions, and be clear about project non-negotiables and direction.

Alignment Leaders, in partnership with a strong Change Partner, can drastically improve how fast their organization adopts Agile principles and begin to see benefits. However, the reality is that alignment leadership doesn’t happen overnight, and leaders must also adjust

Alignment Leaders, in partnership with a strong Change Partner, can drastically improve how fast their organizations adopt Agile principles and begin to see benefits. However, the reality is that alignment leadership doesn’t happen overnight, and leaders must also adjust to cultural changes before they can help their organization adopt them.


to cultural changes before they can help their organization adopt them. Even if they are willing, the transition process can still be difficult and time intensive.

In many ways, Change Partners are the ultimate Scrum Masters, providing overall project oversight, facilitation, training, and support. However, to be successful, you must:

q RESOURCE THEM. Change Partners need access to your organization to be effective in mobilizing and creating lasting change. Make sure they have access to team members, project management support, and the communication assistance necessary to create change.

q GIVE THEM TIME. In Agile, it can be hard to know how long something will take until you have run a few sprints, made the necessary adjustments, and gotten your feet wet. Agile methods have proven to be much faster than traditional waterfall methods,7 but are iterative in their implementation and usually don’t provide a neat Gantt chart to make you feel in control. Don’t rush your Change Partner (especially in the beginning) but expect results and regular reports on progress.

q TRUST THEIR GUIDANCE. Change Partners can help coach leaders on their path to alignment leadership. This isn’t their first rodeo. Trust their coaching and their guidance on tools, processes, and methodology.

q ENGAGE EXTERNAL PARTNERS IF NECESSARY. Sometimes you don’t have the internal capabilities or bandwidth for a change. Trust your Change Partner as they help you fill capability gaps during a transformation or while you ramp up your internal capabilities.

To create support for Agile in your organization, develop Alignment Leaders and involve a trusted Change Partner. By doing these two things you can implement Agile faster and start reaping the benefits almost immediately. While it may not be easy to implement Agile into your culture, it is possible and there are tools that can facilitate the journey. The faster you can reap the benefits, the easier it will be to garner greater support for the change. In this way, change is exponential—the faster you get there the easier it can be.

7 See Scruminc.com



What Does an Agile Organization Transformation Journey Look Like?When we talk about iterative organization design with Agile principles, we are in no way advocating that companies just choose a few initiatives or tasks at random and start implementing things. Companies need to be conscious about what initiatives should come first, which projects will help them achieve their business strategy, and what trade-offs they are making.

At AlignOrg Solutions, we utilize a series of design sessions (sprints) to help companies determine which strategies, capabilities, and organization choices will deliver the greatest “bang for the buck.” Each sprint is customized to the organization depending on its needs but follows this common framework:

While the framework may be common to all the organizations, each step is composed of a variety of smaller efforts that are customized to an organization’s situation. This situation-driven customization constantly tests and refines the design to ensure proper market fit, build-out of differentiating capabilities, customer engagement, and attainment of operational results.

Each step of the framework involves different teams that work together to create the organization design deliverables.

CHAPTER 4

Implementation & Realization

Macro DesignDevelopment

Micro DesignAlignment

Diagnosis & Assessment


q DIAGNOSIS & ASSESSMENT. Utilizes a broad range of internal employees, stakeholders, and customers to assess alignment discrepancies and problem areas of the organization. This helps identify and prioritize the work ahead. Using our organization alignment model (the Cube Model), organizations can focus their diagnostic efforts to pinpoint the organizational system that is preventing achievement of strategy and/or business results.

q MACRO DESIGN DEVELOPMENT. Utilizes a cross-functional team of the organization or function’s leaders to create a high-level business model and organization design that will address the strategic gaps highlighted in the diagnosis/assessment.

q MICRO DESIGN ALIGNMENT. Utilizes teams of subject matter experts to make organization design decisions down lower in the organization closer to where the work actually happens. Micro design, when done well, is where the strategy of the organization is delivered through effective work processes, clear roles and responsibilities, and aligned metrics.

q IMPLEMENTATION & REALIZATION. Involves building a coordinated plan for disseminating the design throughout the organization and then “inspecting and adapting” as needed to ensure that results are achieved.

We consider each step in organization design a “product” or deliverable that is independently actionable from its inception. In fact, design sessions and teams often develop multiple products simultaneously. As a result (and aligned with Agile principles), this organization design framework allows for constant iteration at all phases of the work depending on the market and new learnings.

This approach to organization design and alignment necessitates high involvement from individuals from throughout the organization and beyond rather than just internal executives. This broad involvement helps ensure market relevance, improve organization alignment, and provide an immediately implementable product.

Following these steps, executives can guide their organization down the path of becoming an Agile organization. Rather than trying to follow a complicated formula or recipe, this approach allows for discretion and adaptation that will fit the strategy and culture of the company. Just like an Agile software or product journey is never finished, the quest to adopt Agile principles is never over – it is a continual process that is changing and reacting to market conditions, customer needs, and business realities.

Proper diagnosis requires examining all organization systems, their connection, and alignment.


CHAPTER 5

How Do I Get Started?To fully benefit from an Agile organization transformation or organization design effort, you need effective teams and means of engaging stakeholders and customers. True to Agile principles, your team should be flexible enough to respond to market changes, customer-centric, and capable of producing design “products” that you can test and implement immediately. But, what does an Agile organization design team look like? What other roles are needed to support the Agile journey? How can you produce organization designs that can be tested and used immediately? And, how do you sustain momentum?

There are many similarities between how we structure Agile organization design sessions (sprints) and Scrum. Scrum outlines three different positions for sprints: Product Manager, Scrum Master, and Team Member. In the broadest sense, Product Managers determine the focus of the team, Scrum Masters facilitate meetings and remove project impediments, and team members do the work.

We advocate something very similar for design sessions. Each member of a design session has a role to play. While the Alignment Leader (the sponsor and “Product Manager”) in the room provides strategic guidance and the final say in the case of a tie, a design facilitator plays a comparable role to the Scrum Master as the team works together to determine how they will develop the organization design “product.”


Role details include:

q SPONSOR (PRODUCT MANAGER). An Alignment Leader who defines the vision of where the organization needs to go. They help secure the organizational resources needed to undertake the alignment work, and they ensure alignment between the team’s work product and the enterprise vision for the organization. Sponsors can participate in certain aspects of the team’s work, but they rarely come with the answer. Instead, they trust the team to understand the best ways for the organization to achieve alignment and then create the conditions where stakeholders in the business can understand the team’s recommendations.

q CHANGE PARTNER (DESIGN FACILITATOR A.K.A. SCRUM MASTER). A specialist in organization design and change who brings tools and methodologies to help the team work through the alignment questions that need to be addressed. They assertively facilitate the team’s work sessions, adeptly guide the team through the design sequence/flow, and challenge the entrenched thinking of the team as they consider design options.

q DESIGN TEAM. A cross-functional group that considers stakeholder feedback (the outside-in voices of stakeholders), establishes strategic and design principles that will anchor the design decisions, and weighs organization alignment decisions in the context of the various organizing systems of the organization.

Now that we understand the roles of participants, how do you find the right people for the job? The first step to assembling the right team is knowing where to look. Members of design session teams should be natural

change agents, early adopters, and strong influencers for the organization. You might also consider utilizing the experience as a development opportunity for high-potential individuals.

Additionally, design sessions are powerful opportunities to help those potentially resistant to the change. Through the design session, these less ready adopters have a chance to voice their opinions, work through the rationale for the change, and ultimately create greater buy-in through their participation and “investment” into the organization design “product.”

Thinking systemically can be difficult for teams at first. It requires contextualizing choices against other organizational systems, simultaneous efforts, and broader enterprise and strategic goals. To be effective, teams must align their choices to every side of the cube to ensure proper strategic and organizational alignment.


Generally, look for individuals that:

q Exhibit strategic thinking and high learning agility

q Can focus on a new direction, change directions quickly, and can work iteratively

q Push performance and constantly reach for higher goals in their job/department

q Communicate effectively, offer fresh perspectives, and are willing to concede to group consensus after healthy deliberation

q People who can step back from their personal perspectives and see an organization from the enterprise level

q Those who can put the best interest of the company before their own even if it impacts their own role

We advocate that each design session should be cross-functional and usually will not involve the same individuals throughout the journey. Each step (or product) will require a different mix of individuals with unique expertise and views into the organization. Overall, this broad involvement ensures a more balanced and holistic design and garners significant buy-in for the organization design from the very beginning.

Most often, effective teams are relatively small (6-10 people). Too many people can slow decision making and be less productive. However, large teams can also produce amazing results and alignment if properly managed and broken into smaller groups during sessions (Rarely is 80 people working in one group effective. However, breaking 80 people into smaller groups in the same room and sharing out together can be powerful). Regardless of the size, make sure that you have sufficient expertise, skills, and representation to be able to make decisions and garner organizational support.

After a team has created a solution, trusted customers and stakeholders also have a role in reviewing and approving the result. This would be the equivalent to “test and learn” in software development, and customers/stakeholders offer invaluable feedback and test cases to further refine and improve the final design. The faster and more immediately design choices can be vetted, the faster implementation can happen. Too many organizations on the road to transformation drag the change out waiting for the perfect answer or waiting for all the “i’s” to be dotted and “t’s” to be crossed. An Agile transformation is no different – design, test, learn, and implement.


Because design sessions cascade through the organization and are cross-functional, the momentum for change picks up. Those involved in designing can play a key role in implementing (or at least in helping share the benefits and vision for the new ways of working). The work of an Alignment Leader (the Product Manager) becomes even more critical as the new ways of working or the design products are implemented. They will signal to the organization why change is needed and address expectations about what needs to change and how to be successful. When things get tough (as they most certainly will), Alignment Leaders and Change Partners put their heads together and find a path forward. Making the change stick is the key to taking the Agile transformation from the drawing board into the culture of the organization.

Successful teams include a combination of the right people, a strong Alignment Leader, a clear vision, and intuitive tools and processes. With these in place, teams can produce the best design choices that reimagine how an organization will deliver value and produce results in a quick, iterative, and Agile way.


As markets continue to change at a rapid pace, Agile principles provide executives with flexible solutions that many call the path to the future. Speaking to those reluctant to adopt Agile principles, Jeff Sutherland is famous for saying, “Change or die.” With increasing digital transformation, globalization, a tightening regulatory climate, heightened consumer advocacy, constant threats from new start-ups, killer apps, and an increase in market change, Sutherland may not be far off.

Interestingly, Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, said something similar to his employees in his annual letter:

“ Day 2 companies [those companies that are less differentiated and “cutting edge”] make high-quality decisions, but they make high-quality decisions slowly. To keep the energy and dynamism of Day 1 [highly differentiated companies on the cutting edge], you have to somehow make high-quality, high-velocity decisions. Easy for start-ups and very challenging for large organizations.” 8

Indeed, highly differentiated companies that will likely succeed in today’s market are those that are fast, dynamic, customer centric, and flexible – one could say, they are Agile.

While Agile may have its roots in software and product development, it has much growth to do in other areas. Our 25 years using Agile principles in organization design have produced, what we feel, are amazing results that help companies change rather than die. We have seen companies complete organization transformations faster than they ever thought possible, quickly respond to market changes, and consistently produce differentiated products and services perfectly tailored to customers. When you set out on your

8 See Jeff Bezos’ annual letter to employees

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CONCLUSION

https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/z6o9g6sysxur57t


next organization transformation, think about how you will embed Agile principles into your organization, culture, and ways of working and who you will partner with that can work in a way that unleashes the benefits of Agile.

Agile organization design may not look the exact same as its product/software development cousins, but the principles at work can produce similar results.


Agile Manifesto Home. (n.d.). Retrieved May 11, 2017, from http://agilemanifesto.org/

Deshler, R., Smith, K., & Von Feldt, A. (2014). Mastering the Cube: Overcoming Stumbling Blocks and Building an Organization that Works. AlignOrg Solutions.

Scaled Agile Framework – SAFe for Lean Software and System Engineering. (n.d.). Retrieved May 11, 2017, from http://www.scaledagileframework.com/

Scrum Inc Home. (n.d.). Retrieved May 11, 2017, from https://www.scruminc.com/

Sutherland, J. (2016). Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time. Kbh.: Nota.

2016 Letter to Shareholders. (n.d.). Retrieved May 11, 2017, from https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/z6o9g6sysxur57t

BIBLIOGRAPHY




http://alignorg.com/

http://www.scaledagileframework.com/




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