Taking Agility to the Enterprise: A Council Conversation

Twenty-four years ago, the publication of Manifesto for Agile Software Development, commonly referred to as Agile Manifesto, paved the way to rethink commercial software development projects. The need for greater customer centricity, responsiveness, and iterative approaches with short feedback loops, all while embracing customer-driven change for a greater value, led to a broader movement beyond software development.

The agile movement gained popularity and got the attention of the C-suite. The promise of shortening time to market, developing products that satisfied more customers, and leveraging internal talent through empowerment was attractive. The idea of business, or organizational, agility became the new objective for a wave of transformations. But it also led to the realization that achieving organization-wide agility is far more complex than achieving agility on a team level. While team agility can be achieved by fostering an open mindset and practicing agile ways of working, agility on an organizational level requires building strategic capabilities spanning strategy and executive decision-making, enterprise functions, tech stack, and, ultimately, the organizational culture.

Why enterprise agility matters

Selling enterprise agility from the angle of team agility is not easy. The C-suite is methodology agnostic. Executives are not in the weeds of how projects and products are run. They focus on business competitiveness and achieving sustainable growth via successful transformations and product innovation. Yet, at the same time, the increasing speed of change and technological progress that drives the reinvention of whole industries keeps the need for enterprise agility in the spotlight.

To get this right, it’s time to rethink enterprise agility—the capability of organizations to be nimble and to adapt rapidly to change—in the context of industry-wide transformations. It’s time to look at the path toward enterprise agility from a holistic business angle, rather than scaling up team agility.

The PMI Global Executive Council, a group of senior leaders from industry frontrunners, discussed this strategic topic during a recent gathering in Barcelona, Spain.

The stage was set by a pre-recorded interview with Arturo Bris, professor of Finance and Director of the IMD World Competitiveness Center. The interview brought up the critical need for agility and speed at the enterprise level, as the impact of technological progress has accelerated the rate of industry reinvention to 7 to 10 years. We learned about the direct relationship between business success and business agility. In short, it was highlighted that companies best equipped to succeed in this fast-paced environment are those that excel at information acquisition and fast decision making, and can manage global and sectoral shocks effectively, pivot quickly, and respond to changes without missing a beat.

Lenka Pincot, Chief of Staff to the CEO, PMI, was then joined by Bruno Pont, Senior Director, Global Business Services, Procter & Gamble, and Ana Paula Mundim, Senior Director, Operations Practice - Global BCG Vantage Business, BCG, for a panel discussion to explore enterprise agility and product innovation.

Key insights from industry leaders on enterprise agility

Then, there was a discussion among the nearly 100 Council members in attendance. The group pondered critical questions about the transformation imperative and the role of PMOs and project professionals in advancing agility on the organizational level. Here are a few key takeaways from the panel and discussion:

• Enterprise agility needs to be supported from the top with strong executive sponsorship dedicated to instilling a culture of transparency, adaptability, informed decision-making, and preparedness.
• Technologies, like AI and cloud computing, can be critical enablers that support enterprise agility. Technologies can help scan the landscape for potential disruptions and enable effective pivots, but in the fast-changing business environment, humans are needed to manage relationships, make decisions, and build strategic partnerships with internal or external stakeholders to leverage their business ecosystem.
• Enterprise agility as a strategic capability is critical not only for evolving product offer; it needs to span multiple domains to allow enterprise-wide orchestration toward informed decision-making and fast reactions—supply chain, product innovation, information acquisition, technology, customer experience, operational models, culture, development and learning, to name a few.
• Project professionals play integral roles in ensuring enterprise agility, but they need to be purposeful in their approach, communicate the value of their projects clearly to executives, and adapt their approach to the business context of the project. PMOs, in particular, serve as important enablers, driving agility through the organization.

Input from project professionals and industry leaders, including the Global Executive Council, is the driving force behind the resources, eLearning, guides, and thought leadership reports that PMI develops for the project community.

Our commitment to advancing enterprise agility

Earlier this year, PMI announced that it had welcomed the Agile Alliance to the PMI family. PMI is committed to exploring and investing in the important topic of enterprise agility and leveraging our relationship with the Agile Alliance to ensure a holistic viewpoint. In fact, representatives from the agile community, including Jim Highsmith, co-author of the original Agile Manifesto, contributed to PMI’s latest thought leadership report: A New Era for Enterprise Agility. Read it here.

You Might Also Like…

• The Hybrid Era: Project Management Embraces the Fit-for-Purpose Approach—The PMI Blog ǀ Read
• Preparing Project Managers for an AI-Driven Future— The PMI Blog ǀ Read
• Why Executive Sponsorship Fuels Projects—The PMI Blog ǀ Read