Business agility

Business Agility: Kidd defines Business Agility as the ability of a business enterprise to run profitably in a rapidly changing fragmenting global market environment by producing quality, high-performance, and customer targeted goods and services. Business Agility is critical to survival in a rabidly changing world, so a firm's strategy can't be static. Firms must constantly refine and update strategies.

"One essential requirement for business survival is the continuous ability to meet customer needs and demands. Market needs cause unceasing changes in product(s) lifecycle, shape, quality, and price. Agility is an enterprise-wide response to n increasingly competitive and changing business environment, based on four cardinal principles: enrich the customer; master change and uncertainty; leverage human resources; and cooperate to compete. "

The term, agility, has assumed different meanings in the software industry. When technology vendors speak of agility, they usually describe methods and forms of software that dynamically change a component such as a business rule or process. For instance, Business rules software suites have button-press redeployment of rules in engines. Similarly, business processes can be easily redeployed. When software methodologists speak of agility, they describe rapid application development techniques such as Scrum. While useful, these things are not business agility.

Often, competitive environments change faster than a firm’s responding Business processes and decision making abilities. Most organizations fail at executing strategies designed to improve their position in the market. They lack business agility. Conversely, High Performance Organizations (HPO) reach for high agility so that they can identify change, respond optimally and set the pace in their industry.

References

Goldman, S. L., and Preiss, K. "21st Century Manufacturing Enterprise Strategy: An Industry-Led View" Agile Manufacturing Forging New Frontierrs, Addison-Wesley, September 1994, ISBN 0201631636{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)

Smart (Enough) Systems: How to Deliver Competitive Advantage by Automating Hidden Decisions, Prentice Hall PTR, June 2007, ISBN 0132347962{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)

External links

General information

• Tom Debevoise, Writings on Business Agility
• James Taylor and Neil Raden's Writings on Business Agility