The Rise of Business Agility in Modern Enterprises

The concept of agility has transcended its origins in software development to become a crucial factor for success across entire enterprises. The necessity for agility is more pressing than ever before, as businesses face rapidly changing market demands, unpredictable disruptions, and technological advancements. What began as a methodology confined to the realm of software development—fostering quick adaptation, flexibility, and responsiveness—has now become a pivotal attribute that defines an organization's capacity to thrive in increasingly competitive markets.

In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, the need for enterprise agility has become more pressing than ever. The competitive market demands organizations to swiftly adapt, innovate, and respond to dynamic changes. 

Understanding the Demand for Agile in Modern Enterprises

The current business landscape is marked by rapid technological advancements, increasing market competition, and a need for swift adaptation to changing customer demands. Enterprises across diverse industries are navigating a landscape defined by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.

The Essentials of Scrum Maturity Assessment: A User-Centric Approach

The Scrum methodology is consistently known to be powerful for delivering results efficiently. It thrives on adaptability. But, how can you gauge your team's mastery of the methodology?

 What is a scrum master? Many of us have heard the same definitions…process facilitator, teacher, coach, servant leader. While these are all important aspects of the scrum master job, these attributes fall short of describing what the role really means.

In a nutshell, the scrum master role is focused on cultivating engaged, productive, high performing teams. They influence without authority, lead processes over projects, and guide based on a set of values versus a set of numbers. The scrum master role is not easy, but it is one we need now more than ever.

“We have to stop the churn on our teams.”

“I have no idea how our work connects to the bigger picture.”

“We have too many dependencies.”

“The constant reorgs are keeping us from finishing work.”

These are actual comments we’ve seen on TeamHealth radar assessments. We’ve been hearing a lot about employee disengagement in recent years. Are these disengaged employees? Not yet! They’re still telling you what’s wrong. 

What is a Scrum Master anyway?

Scrum is hard. Well, the idea is simple enough: Make a plan, execute the plan, and inspect and adapt as you go. However, executing Scrum well is a significant challenge for many teams and organizations. While there are a number of factors that may influence whether or not a team is ultimately successful with Scrum, the effectiveness of the team’s Scrum Master stands out as perhaps the most critical. So, that said, what does a Scrum Master do that is so valuable? 

In part 1 of our two-part series on Agile Leadership Myths, we busted three of the more common tales we have seen prevalent in organizations. Today, we’ll look at three more of these tales of tradition and put them to the test.

Search for leadership books on Amazon, and it will return over 60,000 results. Search for agile leadership books, and you get over 2,000 results. This sheer volume indicates how big the appetite is to grow our leadership capabilities, and deservedly so.

Try to imagine any organized grouping of people being able to function without skilled, competent leadership. The more complex the goals become, the greater the demand for courageous leaders.

At AgilityHealth®, our team has always believed there’s a relationship between qualitative metrics (defined by maturity) and quantitative metrics (defined by performance or flow) for teams. To prove this, a few years ago, we adjusted our Agile team assessments to gather both qualitative and quantitative data. Once we felt we had
sufficient data to explore through our AgilityHealth platform, we partnered with the University of Nebraska’s Center for Applied Psychological Services to undertake a review. The main question we wanted to answer was: What are the top competencies driving teams to higher performance?