What Is: Business Agility

From the Stone Age to the Industrial Revolution, humanity has gone through a lot of change and progress.

Today we're living in the Age of Software and Digital (Carlota Perez) and it is pushing our adaptability skills to the limit. Even more so for businesses trying to stay relevant in a world inundated by fast changing tech, fad-of-the-day buzz words and concepts, or the myriad of frameworks and hybrids.

According to Dean Leaffingwell "Every business is a software business now. Agility isn't an option, it is a business imperative".

So: what is "business agility" and what does it look like in real life?

More than one definition

1. Business Agility - by Business Agility Institute

Since 2021, there is an entire organization dedicated to business agility - the Business Agility Institute. It has reached almost 7000 members (2023) across  87 countries and it boasts an impressive library of more than 600 case studies, videos and research publications.

Their lobbying for business agility is based in the belief that "the businesses of tomorrow are agile, innovative, and resilient – perfectly designed to thrive in increasingly unpredictable markets".

The institute defines business agility as "a set of organizational capabilities, behaviors, and ways of working that affords your business the freedom, flexibility, and resilience to achieve its purpose".

It bases its model on 5 primary domains, summing up 18 capabilities, all dealing with customer centricity, flexibility, value driven delivery, people and culture.

2. Business Agility - by Scaled Agile Framework

Built on concepts from Lean, Agile and DevOps, the Scaled Agile Framework claims to be "the world's leading framework for Business Agility". The framework launched its 6th major update (March 2023) since the initial release in 2011.

In SAFe, business agility is defined as "the ability to compete and thrive in the digital age, by quickly responding to market changes and merging opportunities with innovative, digitally-enabled business solutions" (source: ScaledAgileFramework).

SAFe bases the business agility notion on 7 core competencies. These are not promoted as a "big bang" solution, but rather as a journey of mastering each one, incrementally.

Alongside the core competencies, SAFe introduces the concept of Business Agility Value Stream (BAVS).

A Value Stream is, in its simplest form, a team of teams that share a common business and technology mission. The BAVS is specifically designed to capture emerging business opportunities and deliver a valuable solution within a very short period.

In traditional and phase-gated development process, the journey between business opportunity and delivery can take roughly between 1.5 and 2 years, whereas the implementation of BAVS can shorten that time to 2 to 6 months.

Why do companies need Business Agility?

The world is moving today faster than it ever had before. From new technologies to fast fashion, everything around us is changing at a break-neck pace. In such times of fast change, the long-term survival of every business is directly linked to its ability to adapt. And this is where Business Agility comes in.

Having in place strategies and operating systems that allow for quick, adaptive reactions to an ever changing market context is the sure way (if not, the only way) to stay in the game.

According to Charles Darwin, the one that is most adaptable to change is the one that survives. And there's no shortage of change and challenges.

In the post-pandemic world, dominated by A.I.'s rapid evolution, economic turbulence and increasing customer expectations, Business Agility has a major role to play in companies' strategies, if they are to thrive and stay relevant.