Agility what is it

This of course forced laggards who had never considered remote working, cloud, apps and social media to immediately get on the bandwagon or risk oblivion from the unexpected pandemic risk materializing. In the ever-evolving world of information technology, being able to speedily, yet effectively, respond to market changes is a difficult but critical task. As organizational capabilities change, so must IT capabilities—and sometimes it becomes necessary to reconfigure or completely replace organizational structures, processes, or systems in response to evolving marketplace realities.

At the same time, though, there is still a desire for control and stability, hence any lingering hesitation to embrace all change in IT environments. An increasingly common suggestion for how businesses can achieve all these things effectively is through IT agility.

In general, agility is a common business term that refers to how fast an organization responds to opportunities. It is typically recognized as the time in between an organization becoming aware of a potential business opportunity and acting on it. This could include:. IT agility, then, is a measurement of how efficiently the IT infrastructure of an organization can respond to external stimuli.

This can mean how effectively it embraces the pressure to change or how successfully it creates a new opportunity. Instead of being thought of as another task to complete, IT agility should be viewed as more of an overall mindset, eventually becoming part of the company culture.

While there are many approaches to IT agility, the agile manifesto has been associated as the go to reference in the world of software development, by embracing frequent delivery and welcoming changing requirements. At the end of each sprint, the work and project priorities are evaluated, which allows for client feedback to be incorporated, as well as including improvements and changes.

There are a variety of common principles that can be gleaned from the agile manifesto in IT agility including:. But one must be careful not to implement IT agility in a manner that is at the expense of business outcomes and value. A fragmented approach can create other bottlenecks in the flow of work resulting in frustration and misalignment, cost overruns, high technical debt , and ultimately unhappy customers.

In addition, speed sometimes can come at the expense of completion and quality. A holistic approach is more prudent, tapping into organizational strategy and customer experience at the heart of it. Once everyone is onboard with this change, an evolving plan should be put into place to map out short-term and long-term strategic goals.

If you have a solid outlook on where you would like your systems to be going, then it makes it that much easier to select the appropriate opportunities that will get you there once they come around. To begin creating this plan, the business must first reflect on some of the key factors that are driving the application of agility to begin with:.

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How to use agility in a sentence Recent times have upended markets, and marketers increasingly need a robust unified platform with agility , breadth and depth, and execution speed with high precision.

The oil and gas industry has lost more than , jobs this year kdunn6 October 5, Fortune. Shaq, Year One Charles P. The Chequers James Runciman. Kari the Elephant Dhan Gopal Mukerji. Digby Heathcote W. Minnie's Pet Monkey Madeline Leslie. Unlike their more traditional counterparts, agile organisations actually perform better under pressure.

In their strategy, they have a shared sense of purpose. In their structure, they have a strong network of teams that are empowered to take action. To foster a more agile approach to work, a growing number of organisations are rethinking their current processes, structure and physical environments in order to spark a change in attitude.

For instance, many organisations are investing in physical spaces that empower their employees to work in a more agile manner, from creating open-plan offices with a range of different breakout spaces to encourage collaboration and the free-flow of information, to investing in the right technology that allows people to work flexibly or remotely.

This means they are no longer pigeonholed by their functions or backgrounds — they have the opportunity to work across teams to actually see their ideas and work come into fruition by taking a carpe diem approach.

What is your organisation doing to facilitate your people to take ownership? But this shift in thinking and attitude requires a shift in your culture. Your organisation needs to celebrate success and reward results over superficial metrics like time spent in the office. And your employees need to feel safe enough to make mistakes and learn from them. While redesigning your existing processes, creating a more collaborative team structure and investing in new technology can promote greater agility, to create an agile workforce, you critically need your people to be agile.