Organizational Agility 

The Organizational Agility (OA) competency describes how Lean-thinking people and Agile teams across the enterprise optimize their business processes, evolve strategy with clear and decisive new commitments, and quickly adapt the organization as needed to capitalize on new opportunities. Organizational Agility is one of the seven core competencies of Business Agility, each of which is essential to achieving Business Agility. Each core competency is supported by a specific assessment, which enables the enterprise to assess its proficiency. The Measure and Grow article presents these core competency assessments and recommended improvement opportunities.


Why Organizational Agility? 

In today’s digital economy, the only truly sustainable competitive advantage is the speed at which an organization can sense and respond to the needs of its customers. Its strength is its ability to deliver value in the shortest sustainable lead time, to evolve and implement new strategies quickly, and to reorganize to address emerging opportunities better. Organizational agility is critical to respond sufficiently to challenges. Unfortunately, most businesses’ organizational structures, processes, and cultures were developed more than a century ago. They were built for control and stability, not innovation, speed, and agility. Small incremental changes to how businesses manage, strategize, and execute are insufficient to remain competitive. This requires a leaner and more Agile approach which, in turn, requires sweeping changes that have a positive, long-lasting impact on the entire enterprise. 

The SAFe approach to addressing the challenge of digital transformation is the ‘dual operating system’ (see Business Agility). This approach leverages the stability and resources of the existing organizational hierarchy while implementing a value stream network that leverages the entrepreneurial drive still present in every organization. By organizing and reorganizing the enterprise around the flow of value instead of the traditional organizational silos, SAFe restores the second (network) operating system. It allows organizations to focus on the innovation and growth of new ideas and the execution, delivery, operation, and support of existing solutions.

Lean-Thinking People and Agile Teams – Everyone involved in solution delivery is trained in Lean and Agile methods and embraces their values, principles, and practices. 

Lean Business Operations – Teams apply Lean principles to understand, map, and continuously improve the processes that deliver and support business solutions. 

Strategy Agility – The enterprise is Agile enough to sense the market and quickly change strategy when necessary.

Extending the Mindset, Values, and Principles to the Enterprise :

Extending the Lean-Agile mindset to the entire enterprise forms the cornerstone of a new management approach and results in an enhanced company culture that enables business agility. It provides leaders and practitioners throughout the enterprise with the thinking tools and behaviors needed to drive a successful SAFe transformation, helping individuals and the entire enterprise achieve their goals. 

The Lean-Agile mindset establishes correct thinking, but it’s the ten underlying SAFe principles that guide effective roles, practices, and behaviors. These principles are fundamental to organizational agility and the Lean-thinking people and Agile teams who enable it. Everyone in the enterprise can apply these principles to their daily work and become part of the leaner and more Agile operating system.


Step 1: 

Be Agile First, the teams adopt and master the Lean-Agile mindset and practices. This creates a universal value system and a shared understanding of Agile. SAFe’s Lean-Agile principles and Lean-Agile Mindset guide the right thinking and behaviors for teams and their leaders. They provide a ‘North Star’ that points the way to being Agile, even when specific Agile guidance does not exist for that domain.

Step 2: 

Know your Value Stream Next, teams must know how they participate in the organization’s flow of value within the operational and development value streams. Taking a system’s view of the value delivery process allows teams to understand where and with who most of their interactions occur. Value Stream Mapping helps understand the steps in value delivery and the boundaries of the value stream. Based on this knowledge, teams organize to increase productivity and deliver business value.

Step 3: Specialize the Principles and Practices

As teams and individuals mature, they must evolve their practices to define what Agile and built-in quality mean in their context. In this way, they make it their own. While driven by the same set of principles, the practices, and the methods in which they are applied, differ. Organizing around value, facilitating flow, planning, synchronizing, reviewing results, building quality, and delivering value depend on a set of unique parameters within which each team operates. Teams pick a simple starting point and continually adjust their way of working based on their individual experience with a set of practices. As already discussed here, many business and technology domains have already begun this journey.