Speed or agility is one of the keys to competing in today’s business environment. Companies that can; bring product to market the fastest, are the quickest to respond to changes in customer preferences, have the most effective supply chains, or quickly adopt to the latest business models are the ones who are showing the largest improvement in value. In today’s environment speed very much depends on the timely exchange of information. This puts IT squarely in the middle when it comes corporate speed. I believe in fact that companies that do not have agile IT, cannot themselves be agile.I examined manufacturing organization that are known for their speed and agility. As I did this comparison I was struck by four basic principles which the organizations share:
1. They reuse whatever they can wherever they can 2. They innovate processes incrementally and learn quickly from mistakes3. They share knowledge quickly and broadly4. They have a set of values that all participants understand and conform to
I further believe that the most Agile IT organizations use these four principals. Let me demonstrate by example what I mean below:
1. Reuse – Set up a process that use a standard flexible specification for exchanging information with customers. Reusing a common spec reduces the time it takes to establish customer connections by an order of magnitude.
2. Innovate incrementally – For this to be effective you must start with standard well-defined processes. Creating variants off a standard process improves the ability to quickly try out and evaluate new ideas, and effectively deploy the ideas that work throughout the organization.
3. Knowledge Sharing – Most large companies have dozens of locations and thousands of employees. The real value of innovation comes when everyone quickly adopts improvements. An effective process for sharing best practices will led to improvements not just in one location but across the entire organization.
4. Common Values – A common set of values allows people to work together most effectively. I’ve repeatedly seen teams come together to address critical challenges in large part because they had a common goal and trusted each other to get the job done.
Agile teams work as one
I believe these principals need to be part of the fabric for getting the job done in any highly effective IT organization and must be deeply ingrained in an organization’s cultural foundation.
