Making the Move to Enterprise Agility: AgileSHIFT®

What does enterprise agility mean? Is your organisation ‘agile’? Or do you experience ‘pockets’ of teams ‘doing agile’?

Enterprise Agility

Enterprise agility can be defined as:

“The ability of an organisation to move and adapt quickly in response to shifting customer and market needs.”

AgileSHIFT, AXELOS, 2018

Considering this definition:

1. Does your organisation, large or small, private or public, need to have the ability to move and adapt quickly in response to shifting customer and market needs?
2. Does your organisation currently have the ability and (exercises that ability effectively) to move and adapt quickly in response to shifting customer and market needs?
3. Or would your organisation like to be agile and have enterprise agility?

Depending how you answered these questions (e.g. Yes, No, Yes), AgileSHIFT can help create a culture of enterprise agility.

AgileSHIFT from AXELOS provides not only insights as to why organisations need to transform but actual guidance to support the shift to true enterprise agility.

Run versus Change the Organisation

Many organisations are separated into two key areas: ‘Run the Organisation’ (think typical business as usual) and ‘Change the Organisation’ (think projects/programmes delivering change, or even ‘innovation’).  Such a distinct separation has led to the appearance in some organisations of change being ‘imposed’ on those running the business.

AgileSHIFT sees this ‘separation’ approach as “an outmoded model for all but the most static of industries”.  In effect, separation of ‘Run the Organisation’ and ‘Change the Organisation’ presents a significant threat to any enterprise facing change at today’s accelerating pace.

“AgileSHIFT stipulates that for organisational agility to be a success, change the business cannot be separated from run the business”.

AgileSHIFT, AXELOS, 2018

Digging deeper into Enterprise Agility…

Enterprise agility, however, is not about ‘one size fits all’. AgileSHIFT introduces the concept of ‘multi modal working’: different ways of working may be required for different teams and tasks across the organisation.

A simple example of this is a programme incorporating projects utilising different methods from PRINCE2®, to PRINCE2 Agile®, to Scrum or Kanban. The idea is to focus on the best approach for the task, team, individuals and context, with the emphasis on the customer and providing value.

Next steps…

Whilst AgileSHIFT does not aim to provide a step-by-step approach to enterprise agility, it does provide a framework of principle, practices, roles and workflow to support the enterprise agility journey.

For more information on how we can help your organisation achieve enterprise agility with AgileSHIFT, contact us today on 1300 70 13 14.

AgileSHIFT^®, PRINCE2^® and PRINCE2 Agile^® are registered trade marks of AXELOS Limited, used under permission of AXELOS Limited. All rights reserved.