We live in a technologically advanced era where products keep popping up in the market more frequently than ever, and every product launched in the market can act as a market disruptor for your firm. This type of trend poses a more significant risk to the established firms that need to go through quick changes according to the market’s evolution.
An expert will suggest many ways to deal with this type of situation, but if you look at the trend, you will realize that most of the firms are moving toward the agile approach to deal with this situation.
What is organizational agility, and why will you need it?
In the modern era, most of the firms out there are in a VUCA market. The VUCA stands for volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, and in this type of market, the requirements keep on changing frequently. What customers considered as excitement might become a satisfaction only. In addition to this, new firms are highly innovative, and this is posing a threat to established firms out there.
To deal with such situations, firms are turning agile, which is why you must be witnessing a rise in the agile organization. The agile approach is being applied on the team level, and it is being done with the simple motive of enhancing the product development efficiency. But when it comes down to long-term business sustainability, then a scaled approach is required, and in this type of approach, the whole firm will need to adopt the agile method, not on a separate basis.
Some common attributes of an agile organization
Following a shared purpose or vision
One of the agile approaches’ main aspects is that it’s based on a customer-focused approach and dedicated effort to create value for all the stakeholders. This is why when companies start using the agile approach, they start focusing on the outcomes rather than just output. In addition to this, the agile approach requires continuous feedback from both the internal and external stakeholders.
An ecosystem of independent services and empowered teams
When an agile organization builds the structure, they will view it as an ecosystem of independent services where every service in the line will directly or indirectly contribute to the customer value delivery. The faster stream of communication is made possible in the agile approach because of established connection and visibility among all the stakeholders. With the help of this type of approach, firms will visualize the flow of their situation across all the different structures.
Rapid decision making and learning cycles
By embracing uncertainty, the level of risk involved in project management is greatly reduced with the agile approaches. Instead of working on long term and highly detailed plans, the agile approach firms will need to get involved in a rapid decision-making process. This will only be possible if the firm will frequently release value to the whole market.
The companies relying on the agile approach achieve this by decreasing the batch size of everything. In addition to this, they also get involved in regular learning cycles, which is more commonly known as feedback loops.
If you are going to use the agile approach in your organization and look forward to spreading it throughout your entire firm, you will need to take care of certain aspects of the agile approach. By proper implementation, you can make agile the best approach adopted by your firm.