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AGILITY
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH,
EXPERIMENTS & RESULTS

An individual, a team, or an organisation
performs better than another one
more knowledgeable & experienced in Lean/Agile
b) How can the
under-performing
one catch-up?
THE PROBLEM
a) Why?

A) WHY?
Intuitive understanding?
Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/jlatimer/4972886728/ - Jeff Latimer

A) WHY?
Mind-set?
Image from free wallpaper collection: http://italkcafe.com/data/mind-blowing.html#

A) WHY?
A better ability to balance anticipation (preparation
and upfront planning) and adaptation (sensing &
responding) to the current circumstances?
Image from Jim Highsmith, Agile Software Development Ecosystems

B) HOW CAN THE UNDER-PERFORMING
CATCH UP?
- How can the under-performing one improve?
- How can tacit knowledge & tacit experience be
transferred to them?

THE FULL STORY
A group of Scientists:
1. Defined Agility and identified 6 characteristics of
Agility that can be developed and measured
2. Defined a continuum from Command & Control to
a flat/edge organisation, and named 5 points of
this continuum that resemble 5 team/org
structures

THE FULL STORY
4. Ran empirical experiments with these 5 teams
structures and various challenges, measuring the
performance of each team, and discovered
what challenges benefit more from Agility
5. Identified 9 inhibitors of Agility
6. Drafted a curricula to develop Agility

SCIENTIFIC WORK
Scientists: David S. Alberts, Richard E. Hayes, et al.
From 2003 to 2013
- Defined, validated and tested Agility Theory
Study award:
2014 NATO Scientific Achievement Award

SCIENTIFIC WORK
Applicability:
- Complex endeavours such as economic development,
cyber-security, civil-military
- Individuals, teams, orgs, collections of orgs
- Business Agility
- IT and non-IT Lean/Agile organisations
- Lean/Agile Software development

AGILITY SCIENTIFIC DEFINITION
Agility is
- a new way of thinking about and preparing for
the unanticipated
- the ability to successfully effect, cope with,
and exploit changes in circumstances.

MEASURING MANIFEST AGILITY
A measure of manifest Agility is a function of the difference between baseline
and actual performance over time after a change in circumstances

6 CHARACTERISTICS OF AGILITY
A characteristic of Agility can be:
- Passive: an innate quality or design of the entity(*)
- Active: imply the ability to sense and respond
(*) Entity:
an individual, a
team, or an
organisation.

1. VERSATILITY (PASSIVE)
allows an entity to continue to operate effectively as
is, despite changes in circumstances or conditions.

2. FLEXIBILITY (PASSIVE)
When the preferred response
does not work, it’s the ability to
try and employ multiple ways
to succeed, the capacity to
move seamlessly between
them, and the ability to learn
more than one way to do
things .

3. RESILIENCE (PASSIVE + ACTIVE)
the ability to recover from or
adjust to misfortune, damage,
or a destabilizing perturbation
in the environment; the ability
to repair, replace, patch, or
otherwise reconstitute lost
capability or performance, at
least in part and over time.

4. ADAPTABILITY (ACTIVE)
the ability to change work processes and the
organization, to recognize rapid change, changes in
the environment and in shifting priorities, identify the
critical elements of the new situation and trigger
changes accordingly.

5. RESPONSIVENESS (ACTIVE)
the ability to react to a change in the environment
in a timely manner; it involves speed and also the
consideration of when would be the appropriate time
to act.

6. INNOVATIVENESS (ACTIVE)
the ability to do new things and the ability to do old
things in new ways, accomplish something—a
discovery or invention when there is no known
adequate response for the situation.

CONTINUUM FROM COMMAND & CONTROL
TO SELF-ORGANISATION
3 Variables:
- Distribution of
information
- Patterns of
interaction
- Distribution of
decision rights to
the collective

CONTINUUM FROM COMMAND & CONTROL
TO SELF-ORGANISATION
The 5 structures and
work organisation of
teams and orgs tested
in experiments:
- the 2 ends of the
continuum
- plus 3 intermediate
points

EXPERIMENT RESULTS:
MATCHING CHALLENGES WITH STRUCTURE
Edge C2/Collaborative C2 structures are better
when:
1. The environment is highly connected with frequent
interactions that cause a diminished capacity to
predict
2. A certain level of shared understanding is needed
to succeed in important endeavours because the
high level of interdependency

EXPERIMENT RESULTS:
Collaborative/Edge structures are better when:
3. There are rare, very low probability events that can
occurs and bring great opportunities or risks,
together with huge consequences
4. There is a condition of time pressure because the
amount of information and information processing
required exceed the available time

EXPERIMENT RESULTS:
Collaborative/Edge structures are better when:
5. The nature and extent of the uncertainty associated
with a situation affects our ability to both formulate
the problem and find an acceptable solution.

9 INHIBITORS OF AGILITY
1. Restrictions on access to available information
2. Confidence that the best approach in already known & always knowable
3. Passive reliance on approved planning, models, methods
4. Lack of diversity
5. Optimized process & investments with lack of basic research and experimentation &
exploration
6. Lack of proper education and training
7. Resistance to change
8. Intolerance to risks & uncertainties
9. Fear of failure and disincentives

Short course on Agility: http://www.dodccrp.org/html4/education_nec2.html

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