If your business is looking at tackling an agility project or programme might want to attend IndigoCube’s Business Agility Conference in July, which will feature thought leaders on business agility like Scott Ambler, Mark Lines and Jaco Viljoen.
The speakers have written books on the topic, hundreds of articles, have been on the think tanks, and collaborated with the other experts.
IndigoCube is helping organisations step out of the traditional ways they’ve worked so that they can embrace agility to reap the rewards of digitalisation and effectively deal with disruption.
“To use a military metaphor, a lot of enterprises today are trying to move their traditional armies in lines facing one another across open fields,” says Jaco Viljoen, principal consultant and head of digital at IndigoCube. “Tens of thousands of infantry in blocks would line up and fire what were pretty inaccurate weapons at groups of enemy infantry. They were supported by cannons and cavalry and, at the end of the day, victory was achieved after thousands of people had died in battle.
“Those set piece battles of the Napoleonic era are irrelevant on today’s battlefields. Armies today use a few specialists to conduct targeted missions. And specialists are chosen for unique missions based on their skills. Everything is about precision, speed, and minimising collateral damage. Nobody fights battles the old way anymore because they would just lose.”
Agile, says Viljoen, supports a similar evolution of the modern enterprise. Digitalisation is about supporting the evolution of the dynamic relationship between consumers and businesses to be more responsive, adaptive, and flexible. Organisations must change if they are to conduct business in new ways to meet new customer expectations.
“Businesses will have to be managed and architected differently and the IT infrastructure must adapt to support the business model to help it respond quicker,” he says. “And that also demands a new approach to security. We still live in a world of castles, moats, and drawbridges when it comes to security but we need a new way to think of it because this is a world of insurgency, not set piece battles.
“The future is different from the world we inhabit today. Today we can have products that are the bread and butter of businesses. But with customers playing an increasingly prominent role in dictating the products they access, future products will have to evolve rapidly and substantially.”
He says this fundamentally changes the playing field. “This is not about IT. This affects your business and that makes it a business issue. It requires a new strategy so we need to evolve the structure to keep up.”
Managing that change is one of the biggest challenges organisations will face as they pursue agility.
“IndigoCube understands this and knows what to do about it. And we have developed a framework model that links back to the way your business develops software, what tools you have and use, and the processes around how you interact with your customers. It clearly shows what you need to serve your customers better and how the business can benefit from better support,” says Viljoen.
Scott Ambler and Mark Lines are in South Africa in July for a free conference sponsored by IndigoCube and IBM on why Agile is a business issue and what enterprises can do to get it right.