Abstract
This article serves as a practical how-to guide on how to start an agile transformation journey. Transforming the entire organizational body into an agile organism, many actions are required along five key company design dimensions: Purpose & strategy, Leadership & People, Value-Added Operations, Coordination & Collaboration, Structure. Based on a survey of 285 companies and the analysis of more than 70 agile transformation programs of leading companies, the authors have developed the agility toolbox, which includes over 80 single measures on how to agilize a company’s organization. Based on research and project experiences, four basic agility fitness programs have been deducted, showing how to achieve a basic agility constitution (“Basic Physical Workout”), how to build the frame and leadership capabilities to transform the entire organization (“Mental Strength”), how to build and develop the required human capital of the firm (“HR Pentathlon”) and how to transform the company into a testing engine fueling innovation continuously from the inside-out (“Innovation Jump”). All fitness programs can serve as a starting point, depending on the individual degree on agility. However, the real challenge is to scale agility within the organization. To achieve this, the authors recommend the inside-out approach.
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Notes
- 1.
Tesco Value: good enough for their customer, Tesco Standard: better then value, Tesco Finest: best they offer (Rayner 2012).
- 2.
These four agility routines describe the agile performance of each company in a precise and hands-on manner.
- 3.
For exchanging experiences and discussing perceptions, seventeen innovators in software development traveled together in February of 2001 in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah for skiing. The Agile Alliance consolidated their common attitudes in a gathering in the Agile Manifesto and signed it solemnly.
- 4.
Founder of Lean Startup approach.
- 5.
The Object-oriented programming approach was widely used in the late 1980s, the early 1990s (Baumgartner et al. 2013).
- 6.
Act and adapt methodology is described in: Winby, Stuart; Worley, Christopher G.: Management Processes for Agility, Speed and Innovation. In: Organizational Dynamics 2014, 43, 225–234.
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Olbert, S., Walbrach, T. (2019). Realizing an Agile Transformation Journey: How to Start on Monday Morning?. In: Olbert, S., Prodoehl, H. (eds) Überlebenselixier Agilität . Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-18897-9_3
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