What Is an Agile Organization?
The success of Agile organizations is well-documented, from companies like Google, Amazon, and Netflix to Adobe, Spotify, and General Electric. Agile organizations have the ability to develop and deliver products rapidly and provide value to customers and stakeholders alike. However, these organizations are much more than just companies that make valuable products and software quickly. You could work employees 90 hours a week and get software out the door at the end of the week, but that product wouldn’t necessarily be valuable and your process certainly won’t be Agile.
So, what is an Agile organization exactly? What are some common characteristics of Agile organizations and how can your company develop those characteristics?
Focusing on the Customer
The primary area of focus for an Agile organization is the customer. It is a complete shift of mindset when an organization transitions from battling competitors to focusing on making its consumers happy. “Customer-centric” is a term you will hear repeated a great deal from the most successful Agile organizations.
Customer-centric organizations, first and foremost, focus on understanding their customers. They listen attentively and base their output around their customers’ needs throughout the entire product life cycle. They are able to meet the specific needs of their target market by actively developing deep and empathic understanding. The bottom line? Focus on the customer because only through satisfying the needs of your customers will you ever create value.
Power to the Teams (of Teams)
Successful Agile organizations transform a group of people into a cohesive community through their shared purpose and vision. This shared purpose and vision starts at the executive level of the organization and cascades down to every department and individual within it. The hard part is communicating that message out to everyone in a way that allows them, as individuals, teams, departments, and business units to understand where and how they (and everyone else) fit into that larger purpose and vision.
The next step is to create a network of focused, empowered product development teams that encourage active partnerships and transparent operations with anyone and everyone that they need to get the job done. If properly nurtured, this will ultimately create a stable ecosystem of networked and empowered teams where everyone feels comfortable sharing best practices and seeking continuous improvement opportunities in the name of their greater shared vision and purpose.
Embracing Change and Making Decisions Fast
The best Agile organizations live in and embrace constantly changing circumstances. No one knows what the market will look like a year from now. Agile organizations make decisions quickly, constantly pivoting but always maintaining their customer-centric focus. They try to minimize risk through learning, plan lightly for changes ahead, and focus on producing a single primary deliverable within incredibly short activity cycles. These quick cycles encourage rapid iteration and promote quick product learning by allowing organizations to field small, impactful changes and validate them with customers.
There are several benefits to decreasing scope and working in rapid cycles. First, efforts are focused and small. Second, the impact of any given change to a product can be quickly validated against user data. Changes that have a positive impact can be invested in and those that don’t can be abandoned. Lastly, this approach minimizes risk and financial loss by purposefully avoiding protracted, months and years-long product development cycles that could result in the successful creation of a product that customers don’t really want (does anyone remember the Zune?).
Main Takeaways
By understanding what an Agile organization is, it can be much easier to begin to transform your own organization. Successful Agile organizations "do" Agile by creating a shared purpose and vision, embracing change, and empowering networks of product development teams to realize product efforts one feature at a time. They remain customer-focused and are able to deliver great products, incrementally adding value along the way.
Agile organizations actively promote a shared purpose and vision.
Agile organizations actively create shared understanding across the organization.
Agile organizations actively create small product development teams.
Agile organizations actively create networks of product development teams (teams of teams).
Agile organizations free share information across teams.
Agile organizations empower teams to make decisions where the information and know-how is.
Agile organizations constantly seek to improve the effectiveness and impact of how they work.
Agile organizations listen often and attentively to their customers’ needs throughout the product life cycle.
Agile organizations embrace change and encourage experimentation.
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