This episode covers the concept of business agility in the enterprise and shows its relevance to high organizational performance and excellence.  The episode covers what it really means to be agile, discusses its importance, and see how organizations are building capabilities to become more agile to stay competitive.

In this episode, I will discuss the concept of business agility as that is getting a lot of attention lately in the enterprises. We will review what it really means to be agile, discuss its importance, and see how organizations are building capabilities to become more agile to stay competitive.

The Need for Business Agility

Let’s first focus on what business agility really means and the need for it in today’s world. As we all know, and we can see it happening, for the past few years, the industry has been ongoing through a lot of disruption. We see a lot of businesses either transforming themselves dramatically in how they operate and serve their customers or in some cases, we see businesses closing their doors. And all this is happening because of the disruption that has been triggered by the digital revolution and similar phenomena. This disruption where enterprises either have to adapt or risk being driven out of the market has become the new constant and the norm.

One of the major characteristics of this disruption is that it is associated with rapid change in the marketplace. And this applies to almost all industries. We can see for example businesses bringing new products and services at a much rapid pace than before. We see businesses interacting and engaging with customers in new ways and responding to their needs quite quickly. And so forth. So, to keep up with this kind of an environment, requires an agile enterprise.

So, business agility refers to an enterprise’s ability to respond to this ongoing disruption by meeting market and customer demands. It’s about adapting to the constant changes and pressures that an organization faces to bring incremental but rapid changes both internally and externally. The greater the agility, the faster an organization can meet its customers’ needs thus increasing customer satisfaction.

Business agility also provides organizations the opportunity to experiment with new innovations as this enables them to roll out new products and services to the market quickly, gauge market’s reaction accordingly and then can incorporate that feedback rapidly before releasing the next version or iteration of their offering. In the face of fierce competition and constant market pressures, every organization therefore should incorporate agile practices (and agile project management) in all its business operations. We have heard this before that to succeed, we need to fail faster and do it repeatedly by testing new innovations until we get to where we want to be.

Characteristics of an Agile Organization

So, now as we understand what is meant by organization agility, let’s review some of the characteristics of an agile organization based on what we have just reviewed so far.



* In an agile organization, its delivery processes are appropriately aligned to its users, customers, and the market in general to ensure that the right products and services are delivered quickly and based on market and business requirements.

* In an agile organization, its delivery processes are nimble and flexible, yet stable to enable rapid and defect free delivery.

* Also, in an agile organization, the organization appropriately listens to market and customer feedback and responds to internal and external change effectively.



So, if you are part of an organization or department trying to make it agile, you should realize that in building such agile capabilities, your organization may need to tailor its overall delivery m...