Strategies for doing Agile in a non-Agile Environment

Background: Most companies practicing Agile are not fully Agile but instead they combine both Agile and traditional practices in their operations. It is not clear how these practices can be successfully used together in an organisation.Aims: We investigate practitioners' mitigation strategies related to the challenge of doing Agile in a non-Agile environment.Method: Strategies were collected during two studies, an online survey and an interactive workshop run at an Agile meetup and analysed thematically.Results: Strategies related to the wider organisation and not just software development. Two perspectives emerged from the data: an organisational and a change perspective. Five organisational themes were identified with Management and decision-making and Culture the two biggest themes. Nine change themes were identified, with Being open, Using specific approaches and Educating the biggest themes.Conclusions: Better understanding is needed of how Agile practitioners can accomplish bottom-up change in their organisation

Crafting A Human Resource Strategy To Foster Organizational Agility: A Case Study

A decade ago, the CEO of Albert Einstein Healthcare Network (AEHN), anticipating a tumultuous and largely unpredictable period in its industry, undertook to convert this organization from one that was basically stable and complacent to one that was agile, “nimble, and change-hardy”. This case study briefly addresses AEHN’s approaches to business strategy and organization design, but focuses primarily on the human resource strategy that emerged over time to foster the successful attainment of organizational agility. Although exploratory, the study suggests a number of lessons for those who are, or will be, studying or trying to create and sustain this promising new organizational paradigm

People in the E-Business: New Challenges, New Solutions

[Excerpt] Human Resource Planning Society’s (HRPS) annual State of the Art/Practice (SOTA/P) study has become an integral contributor to HRPS’s mission of providing leading edge thinking to its members. Past efforts conducted in 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999 have focused on identifying the issues on the horizon that will have a significant impact on the field of Human Resources (HR). This year, in a divergence from past practice, the SOTA/P effort aimed at developing a deeper understanding of one critical issue having a profound impact on organizations and HR, the rise of e-business. The rise of e-business has been both rapid and dramatic. One estimate puts the rate of adoption of the internet at 4,000 new users each hour (eMarketer, 1999) resulting in the expectation of 250 million people on line by the end of 2000, and 350 million by 2005 (Nua, 1999). E-commerce is expected to reach $1.3 trillion by 2003, and of that, 87 percent will go to the business to business (B2B) and 13 percent to the business to consumer (B2C) segments, respectively (Plumely, 2000)

Execution: the Critical “What’s Next?” in Strategic Human Resource Management

The Human Resource Planning Society’s 1999 State of the Art/Practice (SOTA/P) study was conducted by a virtual team of researchers who interviewed and surveyed 232 human resource and line executives, consultants, and academics worldwide. Looking three to five years ahead, the study probed four basic topics: (1) major emerging trends in external environments, (2) essential organizational capabilities, (3) critical people issues, and (4) the evolving role of the human resource function. This article briefly reports some of the study’s major findings, along with an implied action agenda – the “gotta do’s for the leading edge. Cutting through the complexity, the general tone is one of urgency emanating from the intersection of several underlying themes: the increasing fierceness of competition, the rapid and unrelenting pace of change, the imperatives of marketplace and thus organizational agility, and the corresponding need to buck prevailing trends by attracting and, especially, retaining and capturing the commitment of world-class talent. While it all adds up to a golden opportunity for human resource functions, there is a clear need to get to get on with it – to get better, faster, and smarter – or run the risk of being left in the proverbial dust. Execute or be executed

Leanness and agility as means for improving supply chains. A case study on Egypt

Supply chain management has received greater attention from the academics and the practitioners, however the literature review lacks a comprehensive view for supply chain management practices and how its members should act to contribute to its overall success (Li el at., 2005). In this era, where the business organisations are working in several challenging threats and opportunities, greater attention is given to supply chain management. Nowadays, companies are always searching for means to improve their supply chains. The main aim of this research is to show "how leanness and agility approaches can be used within the same enterprise as complementary means for improving its supply chain". To achieve this research objective, the research has provided an assessment and summarised the literature on the supply chain management, lean thinking and agility thinking including their importance; their definitions; their practices and the relationship between lean and agility. The resulted proposed framework deduced from the literature has been applied in the Egyptian Manufacturing Business to show the relationship between the agility principles, lean principles, entity performance and the successful supply chain

Harnessing agile concepts for the development of intelligent systems

Traditional and current approaches to intelligent systems design, have led to the creation of sophisticated and computationally-intensive packages and environments, for a wide range of applications. This paper proposes methods with which to extend the functionality of such systems, borrowing knowledge management concepts from the field of Agile Manufacturing. As such, this paper proposes that the future of intelligent systems design should be based not only upon the continuing development of artificial intelligence techniques, but also effective methods for harnessing human skills and core competencies to achieve these aims

Enterprise Agility: Why Is Transformation so Hard?

Enterprise agility requires capabilities to transform, sense and seize new business opportunities more quickly than competitors. However, acquiring those capabilities, such as continuous delivery and scaling agility to product programmes, portfolios and business models, is challenging in many organisations. This paper introduces definitions of enterprise agility involving business management and cultural lenses for analysing large-scale agile transformation. The case organisation, in the higher education domain, leverages collaborative discovery sprints and an experimental programme to enable a bottom-up approach to transformation. Meanwhile the prevalence of bureaucracy and organisational silos are often contradictory to agile principles and values. The case study results identify transformation challenges based on observations from a five-month research period. Initial findings indicate that increased focus on organisational culture and leveraging of both bottom-up innovation and supportive top-down leadership activities, could enhance the likelihood of a successful transformation