Agility

Agility is a legitimate and measurable business goal. Gartner defines agility as "the ability of an organization to sense environmental change and respond efficiently and effectively to that change."

Agility cannot be divorced from its impact on the enterprise's bottom line. If the methodologically sound measurement shows that an enterprise has increased its agility (that is, obtained a better agility measurement) compared with its past performance, there should be tangible results to show the impact of being more agile. If not, agility is a worthless measure. By tying agility to the key components of financial analysis, the impact and import of being agile can be assessed and valued. Such an assessment is critical if IT is to prove value from the significant investments of time, technology, and organizational change management that will be required of those seeking agility.

Five Steps Toward Agility:
Step 1: Establish a Baseline of Opportunity
Step 2: Select Business Functions
Step 3: Use Comparable Business Metrics to Assess Current Performance
Step 4: Determine the Financial Impact
Step 5: Monitor Business Performance Resulting From Improvements in Agility

Agility, done right, will create substantial internal change and has the potential for disruption in parallel with innovation. However, agility is not a self-contained venture, local only to the enterprise attempting to be agile. Agility will have causes and effects beyond the enterprise's immediate organizational boundaries.

See Also

Further Reading

• Redefining Agility in the Digital Age Donna Fitzgerald
• How CIOs Balance Stability with Agility Druva