The Age of Agile: How Smart Companies Are Transforming the Way Work Gets Done

When I wrote this review there were only 37 reviews with only THREE reviews not giving the book a 4 or 5 star review, so I only read those three reviews which consisted of single review that each gave the book: 1 star, 2 star and 3 star reviews. The 3 star review was really just a neutral review, so let's ignore that one "low" review.Of the other two "low" reviews, there was a VALID critic of not defining less-than common acronyms when they are first used, which was a bit annoying, but with an internet search the annoyance was resolved; I am actually surprised the editors or reviewers did not catch this? ;-)With the acronym annoyance aside, this was an amazingly valid book based on my personal experiences in: business, law, finance, technology and "real-world" economics!What I really liked most about the book was his use of analogies throughout history to make connections to trends that can easily be seen with the great benefits that hindsight provides; particularly with the center of the universe analogy relating to the fallout created by Copernicus but having a greater actual impact on Galileo, which is a well established fact! This book has given me a totally new view of history...beyond the Copernicus/Galileo story!Having just left a corporate job with a "legacy" company just two months prior to finishing the book, while reading this book I felt like the author was describing the problems and challenges for the company that I was working at to a tee! It was as if he was in the same meetings and actually eased dropped on my private discussions with upper management...like WOW!!!While many people can read the same book, they will not have the same reading experience as we bring our unique life experiences to the book that controls and/or greatly influences how we interpret what an author writes.While another critic from the "low" reviews, was that the author wandered too much. However, since he was trying to make connections that spanned not just the last 20, 30 or 40 years, but several centuries of human history, it is highly probable that someone might get the perception that the author wandered too much, but for me he was just weaving things together from the VERY distant past and the not so distant past into both the present and the future!As for the final, and most damming critic, that he is wrong, well given my personal experiences in the trenches I saw first hand that he was totally on target on so many fronts that it sent chills down my spine to know that our collective struggles, including for those individuals in charge and making the calls at the top, were based on such bad fundamentals. The reality is far worse than he painted as he forgot to mention the premature deaths by so many great people and zombification of those who feel that I left behind to struggle in an environment that they might never escape to achieve a happy and fulfilling life! :-( To claim with just a few words in a review and ZERO support for your assertion that the author is wrong is a disservice to EVERYONE who is working SO hard on this planet to move humanity forward! It is for this reason that I recommend that this book is A MUST read book for EVERYONE, independent of industry or vocation. By the way, I intentionally used the word "vocation" as the knowledge in this book will help EVERYONE understand why they are struggling so hard and may never get a break no matter how hard or smart they work; independent of their line of work.If someone does read this book and does not understand a concept being discussed consider asking for help from others or maybe recommend that the book be chosen as part of a book club or book group, but not reading this book will put your future at risk as others will be reading it and they will be at a major advantage over you!I hope this review helps at least one person out there so that my time was well spent! ;-)

I'm an agile software practitioner looking for material about how to expand agile thinking from software projects to companies and management. The Age of Agile started reasonably well, although the first third got a little lost in its own dense vocabulary (I had to search for a definition of 'VUCA' at one point). Then there are several chapters about the author's employment at SRI that felt completely disconnected from the first third and introduced yet more of the author's own abbreviations ('NABC' anyone?). Finally, Denning wanders off into the weeds of shareholder value and financial engineering that seem completely disconnected to the title.

Are you interested in finding a way of flourishing in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world, where your customers run the marketplace with the power of dictators? This book offers a compelling answer that is based on running your business very differently to how it is probably running today.Far from being yet another unproven, “super-exciting” new way to create a more energizing, prosperous, and meaningful mode of working, it is widely accepted and well established.Author Stephen Denning worked at the World Bank in various management positions for decades, and after retirement, began a career as a management consultant. This book focuses on how some organizations are learning to operate in a way that is better for those doing the work, better for those who are recipients of the work, better for the organizations, and better for society.The default operating system for almost every medium size and large-scale organization on earth is bureaucracy, an organizational caste system that discriminates between the thinkers (managers) and the doers (employees).The bureaucratic system of management was designed to produce consistently average performance to a set of internal rules. Its vertical chain of command was never designed, nor is it capable of, moving fast enough to respond to a VUCA marketplace. The alternative paradigm, called by various names, is referred to as ‘Agile’.The Agile movement began decades ago in the manufacturing arena but gained traction recently in an unexpected place - software development. It was published as the ‘Agile Manifesto’ in 2001. The unusual part is that no one would naturally associate the IT department with a robust management system.The Manifesto values “individuals and interactions over processes and tools; working software over comprehensive documentation; customer collaboration over contract negotiation, and responding to change over following a plan.”Organizations that operate as Agile are capable of being highly innovative and efficient, as well as passion-filled and pragmatic. If this sounds too good to be true, consider well known companies that are shining examples of Agile applied.Nucor, the most consistently profitable steel company in the world, practices radical transparency. Every employee knows the profitability of every order that it delivers. The frontline employees, not managers, are responsible for maximizing margins.Morningstar, the world’s largest tomato processor, has no managers, and all key investment decisions are taken by ‘blue collar’ employees. Instead of moving decisions upwards at Morningstar, they have moved competence down to the individuals who have the information and the context to make the best decisions.How do you get individuals to think and behave like owners and reap the financial benefits that flow from this? The organization must be tranformed into small, localized units, each with its own profit and loss responsibility. Essentially, you would have to dump the traditional management practices of manipulating both staff and trying to manipulate customers, and instead treat people as adults.The more common alternative for extracting value out of a company is through financial engineering. This involves short-term cost-cutting, offshoring, share buybacks, tax dodges, and other devices. These can create the illusion of prosperity for investors, but they are in fact systematically destroying real shareholder value.The Agile paradigm is neither easy for traditional managers to understand, nor to implement. Agile has become widespread and popular over the past decades, with tens of thousands of organizations around the world, having adopted its principles.“The new management paradigm is a journey, not an event. It involves never-ending innovation, both in terms of the specific innovations that the organization generates for the customer, and the steady improvements to the practice of management itself,” Denning explains.Agile management is based on three “laws”: the Law of the Small Team, the Law of the Customer, and the Law of the Network.The law of the small team requires that work be done in small, autonomous, cross-functional teams, working in short cycles on relatively small tasks, and getting continuous feedback from the ultimate customer or end-user. When you work in such teams, situations can be analysed, decisions made, and action taken as a single, uninterrupted motion. Immediate conversations sort out differences, work can be fun, and everyone can be in a “flow” state.This is very different to what we generally call a ‘team’. Most teams in twentieth-century organizations were teams in name only. Most of them weren’t real teams at all. The team-leader was a boss like in any other bureaucracy.The law of the customer is that the highest priority is to satisfy the customer. In IT, that is early and continuous delivery of valuable software that is instant, frictionless, intimate, and preferably free.Many managers are familiar with the phrase “The customer is number one!” while continuing to be internally focused, bureaucratic and fixated on delivering ‘shareholder value’. In an Agile organization, “everyone is passionately obsessed with delivering more value to customers. Everyone in the organization has a clear line of sight to the ultimate customer and can see how their work is adding value to that customer—or not.”The third characteristic is the Law of the Network, where leaders are not fierce conquering warriors, but rather like curators or gardeners. You can’t command tomatoes to grow: you can only choose the most appropriate seeds and then provide the appropriate environment in which they can grow best.When the whole organization truly embraces Agile, the organization is less like a giant warship and more like a flotilla of tiny speedboats. This law is the recognition that competence resides throughout the organization and outside the organization, and that through networking inside and out, problems can be solved, and innovation emerge.Agile organizations are not flat – there is a hierarchy, but one of competence, not authority.The author cites common mistakes leaders make when planning to implement and derive the benefits of Agile. These include introducing Agile as just another business process with top management hedging their bets on its success, by a less than fulsome commitment.Then there is the mistake of rigidly apply a methodology conceived somewhere else, for some other business, and attempting to micromanage the change. And there is the common mistake too, of skimping on training and coaching, so that people only understand the idea, but don’t embrace its mindset as their very own.When done right, Agile can continuously deliver more value to customers from less work, which results in terrific returns to the organization.Readability Light --+-- SeriousInsights High -+--- LowPractical High +---- Low*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of the recently released ‘Executive Update.

Really great book with lots of nice examples of companies that have moved to agile. There are a number of case studies and interviews with people who actually implemented agile in their organisations (e.g. Microsoft and SRI).

I enjoyed this book as a introduction to Agile but it did not explore deeply enough for me and felt superficial at times. It has however encouraged me towards more detailed texts on agile and I enjoyed the case studies of companies using agile to good effect.

Not bad

Thought provoking and useful insights to agile in a business context. Questions what our business schools teach as value creating services.

Very good listen