David McCoy

Gartner defines agility as, “the ability of an organization to sense environmental change and respond efficiently and effectively.”  Sounds simple doesn’t it?  And who doesn’t want to be agile?  Daryl Plummer and I have led Gartner’s agility research for years and you know… “being agile” is a lot harder than it sounds.  Besides all the technical challenges, the most vexing impediments to agility I see are organizational complacency, territoriality and political posturing.  You see, agility often requires you to do things that are “outside of the box” and therefore outside of the process norms.  Here is where the curse emerges.  If agility flies in the face of the established process framework, you shift from agility hero to agility goat.  “How dare you mess with my established process, policies, rules, guidelines, etc? Get your agile-talking backside out of here and leave me alone!”

No one will respect your agile moves if you are knocking down his entrenched walls as you go about your actions.  So, if you thought success with agility was mainly hinged on technical brilliance,  you are only about four percent correct. The remaining 96 percent is just plain old politics.  Just like most of life, agility is easier to talk about than it is to deliver.  Remember – agility does not excuse you from doing change management and change management is at the heart of business process excellence.  So, don’t divorce your agility efforts and your process efforts.  They are too highly intertwined.

Have you seen this too, or do I just have a jaded view of reality?  Not that those are the only two options…

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Category: Business Process Management (BPM) Business Rule Management (BRM) Philosophy Rabble-Rousing and General Hoopla Technowishing     Tags:

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