Agile Organization

What Is an Agile Organization?

An agile organization is an organization that is able to respond to changing market landscapes with agility. In other words, it is an organization that’s able to react quickly to changes in the market.

To achieve this, agile organizations typically put a greater emphasis on customers than profits, even if profits are still the end goal. Additionally, they are more likely to be structured as a network of teams that employ fast learning and decision cycles. Usually, they will also heavily rely on technology to achieve these fast reaction times and swift pivots.

How Is an Agile Organization Structured?

Agile organizations typically utilize traditional structures at the highest levels, but everything beyond that is composed of smaller teams that are united primarily by a shared purpose or goal. These teams are more autonomous than traditional teams, which reduces siloing and leads to faster decision cycles and reactions.

General Traits of Agile Organizations

Typically, agile organizations are more customer-centric than other organizations. This means they are more focused on reacting to changes in their customer base than optimizing their internal processes.

They also tend to have an internal structure in which there is a typical hierarchy at the very top, but everything below that is composed of teams that maintain a lot of independence. These teams are united by a shared purpose or goal.

Additionally, agile organizations typically communicate very often with each other and employ new technologies to ensure that they can react as quickly as possible to new developments.

How Does an Agile Organization Divide Responsibilities?

Agile organizations typically employ a traditional hierarchical structure for the upper levels of management. However, below that are teams that have a heightened degree of autonomy compared to more traditional organizations. In essence, these teams make the organizations something of a “decentralized” company.

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