Do Managers Really Know How To 'Be Agile'?

Deloitte’s Global Trends research in 2017 identified that 80% of organisations recognise that they need to develop more agile and diverse leaders and managers.¹

Indeed, ‘agile’ remains a much talked about topic well into 2018. Although it is a relatively new term for most, it was actually coined by a group of industry leaders in 2001 as part of their agile manifesto to make software development more responsive to business needs.

Now, appropriated by mainstream management, the term has spread into almost every aspect of organisational life. Consequently, most managers have probably heard about it, many will incorporate the phraseology into their everyday language, but do managers really know how to be agile?

Back then, when those software industry leaders were creating the agile manifesto, they knew that they had to come up with a development model that would significantly reduce lead times in order to ensure projects were delivered, not just on time, but at the right time - otherwise they risked being out of date and irrelevant.