A few days ago, I blogged about “monumental” agile adoption, and discussed about how large-scale adoption (not just large projects), with 1000s of people involved in an agile transformation needs not just bottom-up, grass roots momentum and buy-in, but top-down executive support. I also was involved in a Twitter conversation about agile companies. The conversation led to how, while the numbers and the scale of agile adoptions are growing, we still need to see more companies leveraging agile methods to deliver business agility.
Jim Highsmith has described agility as, “the ability to create and respond to change.” So, by this definition, an agile business must be able to both create and respond to change. It stands to reason that such a company needs executive leadership that understand, appreciates and is able to institutionalize agility. There is direct financial benefit to this sort of Enterprise Agility. As Jim points out, Enterprise Agility generates 30% higher profit.
The theme of this year’s Agile Executive Forum, organized by the Agile Alliance in collaboration with the Agile Leadership Network at the Agile Alliance’s annual conference is “Now is the Time to move to Enterprise Agility.” As my Twitter friend asked me, is their CEO an agilist?
I’ll be blogging more on this topic shortly, but in the meantime, let us know: is your CEO an agilist?
