Agile Governance
Agile Governance applies the principles of agile as first described in the Agile Manifesto to the whole of the organisation and how it designs the mechanism by which it can execute and control its strategies.
Agile was first used in the pursuit of more effective Software Development, being codified into a set of values and principles in 2001 with the drafting and publishing of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development[1]. Since the mid 2010s, Agile has moved outside of Software Development and is now impacting the way organisations govern systems and work. Agile has moved from being a revolution in the development of software by small teams, to an evolution in management thinking and the established norms of people and leadership across all sizes of organisation. Steve Denning's book, *The Age of Agile*[2], published on 1 February 2018, deals with this transition from small team based software development to upending traditional organisational management theories, and focuses on three specific laws that need to elevate from small team to enterprise agility.
Governance
The evolution of Agile Governance starts with what Governance is trying to achieve. Governance can be defined, for the purpose of agile, as how an organisation makes its decisions; or what systems, culture, norms, behaviours and structures are in place that lead to decisions and outcomes. These generally evolve naturally and in response to problems to be solved over time, as an organisation goes through its own lifecycle. Often large organisations attempt Business_Transformation efforts to change these underlying variables – many do not purposefully address their governance system as an area of concern, and the system ends up reverting to what it was prior to the transformation effort.
Agile governance
Agile Governance takes an approach to governance that applies the key underlying tenets of what makes agile successful in human centric work to the task of governing a larger system. Transparency, Data, Leadership and Work Systems are key information and system factors that make up Agile Governance boundaries. They enable a large organisation to achieve success in agile ways of working without losing visibility and control of the system of work, to allow for predictability and directional alignment with strategic outcomes. Agile governance focuses on the decision-making process, rather than the decision itself. Dr Kevin Thomson, in his book *Solutions for Agile Governance in the Enterprise*[3], talks about the growing focus on connecting Agile Product Development throughout the organisation.
Strategy execution
Agile Governance enables the organisation to execute a Strategy with confidence using the full power agile autonomous teams provides, achieving higher performance in modern ways of working, and ensuring alignment with strategic outcomes. Appropriate governance requires implementing a way of monitoring that ensures the work of agile teams aligns with the organisation's top-level objectives, without controlling how people achieve that alignment.
Leadership in agile governance
The role of leaders becomes focused on creating an overall environment that supports careful and consistent decision making across a network of empowered teams. Some authors, such as Stanley_A._McChrystal in his book *Team of Teams*[4], refers to the changing role of leaders, more akin to "tending a garden where people can grow and flourish." Modern agile ways of working require a style of leadership that moves from the mechanistic approach where people are viewed as cogs in a machine, to one where creativity and individualism can flourish and people can grow. This necessitates being more of a coach that leads people rather than a manager that manages things. Agile Governance requires leaders who support, guide and provide enabling constraints rather than preventative ones.
Agile Governance Adoption
The term Agile Governance has now come into the lexicon of overarching design of agile organisations, appearing as early as 2012 in an article by Steven Thomson titled “What is Agile Governance”[5]. In December 2018, Mike_Cohn, one of the contributors to the Scrum software development method and one of the founders of the Scrum Alliance, wrote an informative piece arguing that agility and governance are not opposed[6], though just focusing on ideas to align them better. Since then agile governance has become more formalised as an overarching way of looking at and understanding a system of work, most recently appearing as a designed agile governance framework[7] by Tony Ponton and Phil Gadzinski in March 2019 as part of a move to formalise and articulate what Governance in an agile environment requires.
The rapid shift to remote working resulting from the global shutdown caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated organisations moving to remote agile working, meaning Agile Governance is growing as a focused need.
References
- ↑ "Manifesto for Agile Software Development". agilemanifesto.org.
- ↑ http://www.stevedenning.com/site/Default.aspx
- ↑ Thompson, Kevin (2 January 2019). Solutions for Agile Governance in the Enterprise (SAGE): Agile Project, Program, and Portfolio Management for Development of Hardware and Software Products. ISBN 978-0578420585. Search this book on
- ↑ "Book Review of Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World".
- ↑ "What is Agile Governance?". It's a Delivery Thing. October 1, 2012.
- ↑ Cohn, Mike. "Agile & Project Governance: Can They Coexist?". Mountain Goat Software.
- ↑ "Agile Governance Framework | Elabor8". November 10, 2019.
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