Review: The Age of Agile

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Information

Title: The Age of Agile
Subtitle: How Smart Companies Are Transforming the Way Work Gets Done
Author: Steve Denning
Publication: 2018
Pages: 320
Complexity: Basic to Intermediate

Introduction

Whenever I’m asked to recommend just ONE book to understand agility, the answer isn’t straightforward. It depends on the person’s role, their prior knowledge about agility, and their specific goal. Typically, when someone in an agile role asks, my go-to is “Coaching Agile Teams” by Lyssa Adkins. However, for organizational leaders, “The Age of Agile” is in my top 3.

It compellingly explains why agility is a crucial strategic tool in the rapidly evolving market, customer needs, and accelerated innovation. It argues beyond the survival of companies, proposing that it also offers a promise of more meaningful and productive work for individuals.

About the Author

Steve Denning is an author, experienced consultant, and former Director of Knowledge Management at the World Bank. He has contributed to the literature on management, leadership, innovation, agility, and learning with a dozen books and over 600 articles to his name.

Book Structure

The first part ot the book is divided into three sections:

  • The Emergence of Agility
  • Implementing Agility
  • Agility at Scale

Each section builds upon the previous one, starting with the problems that motivated the emergence and popularization of agility, continuing with practical strategies for its implementation, and concluding with advice on applying agility in organizations of any size.

Throughout the book, key points are complemented with real case studies, showcasing how agility is implemented to achieve results. Agility is presented not as a set of practices and methods but as a work culture.

The second part of the book focus on the Management traps:

  • Strategy oriented on shareholder value
  • Share buybacks
  • Cost-oriented economics
  • Backward-looking strategy

10 Key Points

  • The VUCA Era: The current context in which nearly any organization operates, necessitating evolution.
  • Agile Mindset: The importance of adopting a mindset focused on flexibility, continuous learning, adaptability, and delivering value.
  • Customer First: How to center efforts and innovation on meeting the changing needs of the customer.
  • Self-organizing Teams: The effectiveness of small, multidisciplinary, and autonomous teams and their impact on collaboration.
  • Iteration and Feedback: Short development cycles for products and services to continuously incorporate customer feedback.
  • Transparency: Promoting a work environment where information is accessible to all, supporting informed decision-making.
  • Adaptability: The ability to quickly change direction in response to market changes or customer needs, resulting in continuous innovation.
  • Agile Leadership: A leadership style that empowers and serves teams while promoting innovation at all levels and areas.
  • Learning Culture: Fostering an environment where mistakes are seen as learning opportunities.
  • Agility at Scale: Strategies for applying agile principles in large and complex organizations beyond software development teams.

Applicable Concepts

  • Becoming Users: When the team can become a real user of what it’s generating, the impact on how work is done is overwhelming. Spotify’s example shows this through the generation of key product features. While not always possible, it’s a good idea to consider.
  • The Law of Small Teams: Known (and many teams attempt to apply it) for having small teams work in short cycles. Practices to consider include working in small increments, cross-functional teams, limiting work in progress, team autonomy, the concept of “Done,” limiting interruptions, daily synchronization, radical transparency, continuous customer feedback, and team retrospectives.
  • The Customer Law: The idea that a company’s purpose is to deliver value to the customer. It’s the most important law but one of the hardest to implement due to the focus on efficiency and cost reduction driving many companies. The comparison with Copernicus’s story makes it digestible for those raised in traditional management culture.
  • The Network Law: Essentially scaling, the concept that teams must interact and collaborate with other teams similarly to how they operate within a small team. And prioritizing the global mission over team goals.
  • The Manager’s Role: Discusses an example of a failing team and a manager’s instinct to focus on the burndown chart rather than talking to the team about it. The goal is to foster a collaborative and enabling mindset with the team, making it responsible for progress, so the burndown chart becomes an internal team tool, not a system for controlling or micromanaging the team.
  • The Shareholder Value Trap: Where it explains that shareholder value should be viewed as an outcome, not as a strategy, and elaborates on this from various perspectives. It then delves into what it terms the share buyback trap and its detrimental effects on companies.

Strengths

The clarity with which the book progresses from explaining the problem to be solved to how applying agile principles and values in various organizational contexts can guide staying relevant and competitive.

Concrete examples and case studies that illustrate the concepts in a practical way.

Focus on the importance of mindset and cultural change along with the adoption of agile practices.

The vision of different costs associated with improvement, putting into perspective the usual focus on improving basic production costs without considering other costs (technical debt, brand, regulations, knowledge, etc.)

Improvements

While valuable, the final chapters diverge from the book’s beginning focus onto economic concepts that we may not necessarily apply from our roles. Their inclusion makes sense when seen as essentially a prologue to his next book “Reinventing Capitalism in the Digital Age.”

  • “Lean Startup” by Eric Ries focuses on how startups can implement agile principles to innovate and succeed in business.
  • “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us” by Daniel H. Pink provides insights into motivation that complement the agile culture well.
  • “Unlocking Agility” by Jorgen Hesselberg focuses on the challenges of Organizational Transformation.

Articles by Steve Denning in Harvard Business Review 

TEDxOslo 2012 Youtube video – The transformation of leadership and management

The Age of Agile on Amazon

Personal Evaluation

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆

“The Age of Agile” is a recommended read for leaders and agilists looking to transform organizations through agility to make them more adaptive and focused on generating value for the customer.

The examples and actionable ideas make it a valuable read for anyone interested in agility.