Manifesto for Enterprise Agility
The Manifesto for Enterprise Agility establishes adaptability as the advantage organizations need to reinvent, respond to disruption, and create sustained value amid accelerating change. Unlock the values and principles that power enterprise-wide agility.
Manifesto for Enterprise Agility
The Manifesto for Enterprise Agility establishes adaptability as the advantage organizations need to reinvent, respond to disruption, and create sustained value amid accelerating change. Unlock the values and principles that power enterprise-wide agility.
Frequent disruptions and fundamental changes on a global scale are creating a new operating reality.
The core question for CEOs is no longer “What is our plan?” but “Are we built for change?”
- Organizations are in flux.
Reinvention is the norm: 93% of CEOs say they must rethink and challenge assumptions of their operating models, or business approaches, at least every five years.
- Expectations are rising. Capability isn’t.
PMI research exposes a widening gap between what organizations aim to do and what they can execute, leaving many unable to adapt fast enough in the face of accelerating disruption. Senior leaders say planning and execution is their top barrier to reinvention.
- Teams feel the pressure.
According to Microsoft, 80% of leaders and employees report a lack of time or energy to do their work, and HR leaders recognized change fatigue as the top barrier to success.
- We need to rethink the way we lead.
As reported by WEF, the eroding trust in leadership overall is highlighted by the new generation of leaders and their views, shifting leadership models from hierarchy to co-creation, from individual authority to shared agency, and from short-term results to long-term impact.
The ability to adapt and move quickly, often with incomplete data, has become a survival skill, not just a competitive advantage.
We see clearly that organizations need enterprise-wide agility to thrive amidst frequent market shifts, allowing teams to sustainably deliver value with intent.
In the age of AI, adaptive human capabilities, resilience, work design, and organizational structure are constraints and advantages at the same time. Leaders differentiate by aligning meaningful purpose with integrated action to create value that matters.
The Manifesto for Enterprise Agility guides leaders through the decisions they face today by grounding goals and trade-offs in a shared set of values and principles that make change-readiness your advantage.
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Praise for the Manifesto for Enterprise Agility
Manifesto for Enterprise Agility
Enterprise agility is the capacity to adapt at scale without losing coherence—to decide quickly, redirect resources deliberately, and keep strategy actionable under real-world pressure.
Agile enterprises build change readiness by sensing potential changes early, making necessary decisions quickly, and reallocating resources fluidly across all functions and levels. Sustainable growth is enabled through innovation, reconfiguration, and talent cultivation. These capabilities are strengthened by purpose-driven leadership and adaptive operating models that capitalize on opportunities to deliver value to customers.
When enterprise agility works, strategy turns into action without friction, teams act with autonomy and alignment, and the organization pivots faster than the market while sustaining growth.
- Clear purpose realized through adaptive plans
Guiding with purpose and adjusting along the way outweighs over-planning and the illusion of control.
- Shared enterprise outcomes over functional optimization
Prioritizing long-term goals and cross-enterprise collaboration outweighs optimizing for short-term, departmental KPIs.
- Continuous reinvention over preservation
Boldly challenging established operating models and innovation outweighs structural inertia and preservation of the status quo.
- Human centricity amidst change
Continuous learning, developing resilience, enabling autonomy, and leading with empathy and trust outweigh leading change by process only.
Jim Highsmith
Independent Thought Leader
PMI® Agile 2026
Shaping the future with agility
26-28 July in National Harbor, Maryland, USA
of Enterprise Agility
- Create clarity of purpose and align on enterprise outcomes
Clarity comes from a shared understanding. Agility is anchored in long-term purpose. When people know where they’re going and why, they can act faster with less supervision. Purpose unites teams when conditions change. By linking individual goals, incentives, and measurements to enterprise outcomes, teams co-create with a culture of shared ownership.
- Expand agility across partners and ecosystems
Agility extends beyond organizational boundaries. It includes partners, customers, suppliers, and regulators. The ecosystem defines the scope of the value creation process. It is not an external dependence. Moving beyond zero-sum competition, the ecosystem gives rise to win-win relationships based on cumulative learning, speed, and adaptability.
- Embrace technology and distributed talent
AI, data, and distributed talent are changing the way companies operate and compete, enabling faster processing of complex environmental signals and data-driven decision making. Technology used with purpose can remove old constraints, help people “level-up”, and enable value flow throughout the organization.
Tameka Vasquez
Founder, The Future Quo
of Enterprise Agility
- Govern with clear guardrails, not gatekeepers
Clear principles and boundaries are defined to guide judgment and enable fast decisions, replacing approval structures with trust and shared accountability. Guardrails act as guiding principles and behavior norms that give the team the direction they need and spark creativity, allowing them to pivot successfully when things don’t go according to plan.
- Fund purpose and intent, not execution activity
Funding decisions need to be informed real-time and dynamic. Not a yearly event. Investments are not static. We continuously pivot resources toward the most promising ideas, ensuring funding is aligned with our current strategic compass.
- Design for adaptability, not just efficiency
Classic efficiency-focused structures create rigid stability. Nimble operating models are designed to enable flexibility, modularity, and empowered teams. They enable rapid reconfiguration, faster decision cycles, and greater responsiveness. True agility requires the ability to move people and capital quickly toward what matters.
Heidi J. Musser
Board Member, Orsa Credit Union
of Enterprise Agility
- Move authority and decision-making to where value is created
Push decision-making and give people accountability and authority where the work is being done. The appropriate level of hierarchy enables teams to make decisions without waiting for approval. This empowerment allows teams to become more responsive and nimbler over time. It also helps clarify the value of their contribution.
- Deliver value frequently and make work visible
Value is delivered frequently enough to allow for feedback loops. The team learns what works, what doesn’t and what needs changing. Make progress, dependencies, and risk visible. Transparency replaces control and unlocks collaboration.
- Sense early, learn quickly, act with confidence
Invest in real-time sensing across customers, markets, technology, and risk. These signals help people understand change. Anchoring on these ground-truth facts, leaders and teams can shorten the distance between sensing a shift and executing a response. Evidence-based agility allows teams to react early and steadily to maximize value.
Dave Grow
CEO, Lucid Software
Download the Manifesto
Among the leaders we talked to:
87%
identified “senior leadership mindset or resistance” as a key barrier of enterprise agility
35%
considered “a disconnect between planning and execution” their top challenge
43%
said “leadership alignment and empowerment” would accelerate execution and relieve friction
Our Role:
PMI & Agile Alliance
As business environments have evolved, operating in a full continuum of delivery practices that fit organizations' needs became table stakes. Recently, PMI & Agile Alliance joined forces to drive impact and the future evolution of the broader project management discipline together.
Enterprise Agility is the next step in the PMI Agile Alliance's mission to deliver large-scale value by introducing agility beyond teams and projects to the entire organizational system, including leadership, operating models, execution governance, and culture.
We're building on the PMI and Agile Alliance legacies by expanding the broader vision for the project profession, focusing on value creation regardless of method, and evolving from project- and product-level to continuous, enterprise-level value flow.
How was the Manifesto created?
We deployed multiple research methods to develop the Manifesto:
C-Suite Research
Two global C-suite surveys with over 700 responses measured the perceived level of importance and maturity in enterprise agility values, principles, and enablers for executives.
The data were analyzed to identify alignment gaps between leadership expectations and current organizational realities, complementing insights gathered through interviews.
C-Suite Interviews
We conducted 25-minute interviews with 30+ C-suite leaders, using a semi-structured interview protocol.
The interview transcripts were analyzed using cross-coder reliability.
Senior Practitioner Survey
We administered a survey of 17 quantitative and qualitative questions on enterprise agility, in addition to demographic, industry, and organizational information to more than 70 practitioners.
The findings identified patterns in values, principles, enablers, and constraints related to enterprise agility.
Desk Research
The synthesis examined 49 enterprise agility manifestos, frameworks, and academic sources during desk research in September 2025.
The research team used synthesis and mapping prompts to create an integrated summary of all common themes found in the literature.
Public Engagement
We opened a public Lucid Feedback Board to collect ideas on the mission, values and principles of the Manifesto.
We enabled open public input and voluntary contributions from project professionals, leaders, and agility practitioners.
