Connecting the Project and Agile Communities: A Debate on Enterprise Agility

When the Agile Alliance joined the PMI family earlier this year, it was clear that the relationship would be long and fruitful, and that it would spark some interesting discussions, as well as collaborations among agile influencers and PMI’s work on thought leadership in the agile space.

Lovers of debate have not been disappointed so far!

Over the past few months, Lenka Pincot, Chief of Staff to the CEO for PMI and a member of the Agile Alliance Board of Directors, has hosted a lively video series on The Agile Network. Known as Lenka Live, the series brings engaging and fun debates about all-things transformation, agile, and projects.

A recent episode of Lenka Live brought together four bright agile thinkers to discuss enterprise and industry agility. Giles Lindsay, Ahmet Rumiye, Dennis Stevens, and Jon Ward, had a lot to say on this hot topic. You can watch the full episode here.
Here are a few of the key insights from the debate:

On the meaning of enterprise agility:

Lenka kicked off the debate by challenging the participants to define what enterprise agility means to them. There can be some confusion about the difference between agile as a project methodology and agility on an organizational scale, so the discussion is critical.

“Enterprise agility isn’t a methodology — it’s a mindset woven into the DNA of an organization. It’s the ability to sense change and respond with speed, clarity, and purpose — turning complexity into clarity, friction into flow, and silos into symphonies. At its core, it’s a leadership commitment to adaptability, value delivery, and continuous learning.” 
- Ahmet Rumiye

“Enterprise agility isn’t something you bolt on—it has to be designed into the organization’s DNA, where strategy, structure, and leadership stay aligned even as conditions change. It’s not about moving faster. It’s about moving together, with purpose, as the future shifts. If agility isn’t built into the system, every disruption becomes a crisis—and every shift risks fracturing trust. True agility creates trust through coherent action, not slogans, and enables the organization to move with clarity, coherence, and confidence under pressure.”
- Dennis Stevens

On project professionals’ perception of their organization’s agility:

Understanding that enterprise agility is NOT about methodology, it’s about the ability of an organization to adapt, pivot, and scale quickly, the discussion turned to an interesting finding from PMI’s thought leadership report: A New Era for Enterprise Agility. Namely, Lenka asked the panelists to comment on the fact that only 44 percent of project professionals rate their organization’s agility as high or very high.

“I think the number is probably realistic. Agility itself still lives in pockets within organizations. It doesn’t necessarily broach the entire strata of an organization…My worry though is this means over half of the market is still stuck…We need to bring agility to decision making, funding cycles, and understanding the true purpose of what the customer actually wants…Until we have that kind of cultural shift within an organization, that number isn’t going to change.” 
- Giles Lindsay

“The vast majority of CEOs are concerned about the agility of their organization. There is a misconception in the market…some talk about business agility and immediately talk about software. We’re not talking about software here.”
- Jon Ward

On making enterprise agility a true competitive advantage:

Being agile is one thing but leveraging that agility to differentiate an organization is the real key to success. Lenka asked the panelists to outline “how” they propose taking an asset and turning it into an advantage.

“We need to create healthy environments for teams to collaborate effectively. And then managing the dependencies, noise, confusion, overload, and lack of coherence around teams becomes critically important. These changes will create mindset shifts. I’m not a big believer in trying to change the mindset before fixing the system.”
- Dennis Stevens

“I think we need to be clear…When we talk about empowerment, you don’t get the same amount of freedom within a team with enterprise agility than you do when you talk about software engineering. The mindset, the leadership, and the way we treat people is the same, but there is a difference in the type of team working. We’re not talking about sprints here; we’re talking about sales cycles and so on. It’s a different ballgame.”
- Jon Ward

On artificial intelligence being a driver or enabler of enterprise agility:

AI is disrupting organizations across all industries. As Lenka mentioned, “we know that digital transformation…is sometimes a driver for the need of enterprise agility, and sometimes it can be an enabler.” The discussion then turned to this interesting distinction.

“I see AI as an assistant or enabler to move our strategy forward. For sure, we always need people…but AI also saves time on day-to-day work so our smart people can focus on driving the whole company forward.”
- Ahmet Rumiye

On talking to the C-suite about enterprise agility:

As a member of PMI’s C-suite and head of the organization’s EPMO, Lenka is used to hearing from stakeholders at all levels about enterprise agility and other topics. During the debate, Lenka mentioned the importance of speaking to executives in the language that they’re used to, and she asked the panelists to share tips on how to do it well.

“The word “agility” is too stretched. We’ve overused it…I, for one, have changed the words I use when I’m talking to my colleagues on the executive team or the board level…I’ve tried to use a simpler language around improvement processes, the things that CEOs actually want to hear – shorter time-to-value, revenue lift and customer loyalty, for example.”
- Giles Lindsay

“Agility needs reframing as a strategic capability rather than an alternative software development approach. To be clear, Enterprise Agility is not a strategy but a means to deliver an organization’s strategy.”
- Jon Ward

“We need to Reframe the word agility. It’s not a synonym for speed. We need to elevate our conversation from “agile” to “being adaptive.” Enterprise agility is not an IT strategy, it’s a business survival strategy.”
- Ahmet Rumiye

“Ask them what they have in their toolkit to address enterprise agility. Then, avoid fuzziness and ridiculous language and tell them three things they can do tomorrow to improve their ability to deal with the risks that are coming at them.”
- Dennis Stevens

“The fact that we’re having this conversation is further evidence that agility is transitioning from a specialism into a mainstream management competency…We need to help the C-suite understand that this will create an advantage by aligning the culture, leadership, execution, adaptability, and responsiveness of the organization.”
- Giles Lindsay

Learn more about enterprise agility

Want to learn more about enterprise agility? Check out PMI’s latest thought leadership report: A New Era for Enterprise Agility. Read it here.

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