An introduction to business agility

On May 12, Extia Switzerland organized an event on agility in company, with Mario Aiello, a Business Agility Consultant and Coach in Switzerland. Its presentation was based around these key points:

• Does the organization need agility?
• What agility for an organization?
• How can we then implement it and express it?

Agility applies across the organization, and beyond the boundaries of IT, including its applications in organizational design, product innovation and next-generation leadership.

A transition to business agility is guided by fit for purpose agility, shaped by fit for context agility and run by fit for practice agility. Business agility is the concern of the entire organisation and not just the delivery tier, and as a purpose it can be pursued through a generative agility model.

Business agility is about value creation and producing better business outcomes, is about identifying and funding innovation, being able to decide what to stop, start, and continue doing based on what you learn, getting clear on what your customers need and optimizing the organization to create the greatest possible value. It requires agility across the entire value stream, being most suitable for purpose-driven organizations.

The context of a business outcome such as the Minimum Business Increment supports work acceptance based on the value it delivers to the organization.

Implementing a solution is based on the understanding of the double/dual loop of needs and outcomes between two teams.

The case of business and delivery teams is at the heart of business agility: the business needs solutions to be delivered, the delivery team needs guidance and clarity from the business. Then, the definition and implementation of value streams help decouple the double loops into smaller loops between the value add teams that compose the stream (portfolio management team, product management team, DevOps team, release management team).

The solution is then expressed through management of the value workflow: work intake process and value delivery by each team, and the feedback loops implemented to capture needs and outcomes.

See you soon for the next Comet' by Extia Switzerland event. Until then, don't hesitate to follow us on our Twitter page @CometByExtia