Agile RESOURCES

Agile Bookstore

Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy

Survive & Thrive on Disruption

Today companies are expected to be flexible and both rapidly responsive and resilient to change, which basically asks them to be Agile.

The lack of an overarching theory about how to expand the Agile Manifesto has led to many fragmented attempts to apply Agile company-wide. Yet, doing Agile (the mechanics) is different from being Agile (the mindset). The mindset lets you apply flexible Agile patterns not only for software development teams but for the whole company.

Many experts are looking into implementing company-wide Agility. Yet, they work from one perspective.

For example:

  • A Beyond Budgeting expert might say, “Stop fixing the budget annually, because otherwise, you won’t have the flexibility to react to frequent market changes.”
  • An Open Space expert might say, “You need to make space for what you don’t know and can’t control, for totally new things to emerge. If people can follow their passion, you will be able to implement company-wide Agility, otherwise, people will just do what they are asked.”
  • A Sociocracy expert might say, “You first need to resolve the power structure, because as long as you have a hierarchy defined as top-down you will not become agile.”
  • An Agile expert might say, “You need to start inspecting and adapting by using regular retrospectives in order to react flexibly, otherwise you will neither be able to learn from the market nor from within your company.”

All of these perspectives are true, but the perspective is always from within the discipline.

Our new perspective synthesizes these approaches and invites you to take a new, overview perspective that can truly address the challenges of doing business in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world.

About the Author(s)
John Buck

John Buck is the coauthor of Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy, about the approach dubbed BOSSA nova. He earlier coauthored We the People: Consenting to a Deeper Democracy, a book about sociocracy as a design system for agile organizing and running of organizations. He is president of GovernanceAlive LLC, an international consulting organization headquartered in Washington, DC, USA. He has led dozens of sociocracy/BOSSA nova implementation projects for a variety of organizations. He believes that such basic BOSSA nova values as self-organization, transparency, constant customer focus, and continuous learning can make our workplaces dramatically more sustainable, elegant, and profitable.

Jutta Eckstein

Jutta Eckstein works as an independent coach, consultant, and trainer. She has helped many teams and organizations worldwide to make an Agile transition. She has unique experience in applying Agile processes within medium-sized to large distributed mission-critical projects. Jutta has recently pair-written with John Buck a book entitled Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy (dubbed BOSSA nova). Besides that, she has published her experience in her books Agile Software Development in the Large, Agile Software Development with Distributed Teams, Retrospectives for Organizational Change, and together with Johanna Rothman Diving for Hidden Treasures: Uncovering the Cost of Delay in your Project Portfolio. Jutta is a member of the Agile Alliance (having served the board of directors from 2003-2007) and a member of the program committee of many different American, Asian, and European conferences, where she has also presented her work. She holds an M.A. in Business Coaching & Change Management, a Dipl.Eng. (MSc.) in Product-Engineering, a B.A. in Education, and is trained as a pollution control commissioner on ecological environmentalism.

This outside affiliate link may provide a commission to Agile Alliance at no extra cost to you.

Discover the many benefits of membership

Your membership enables Agile Alliance to offer a wealth of first-rate resources, present renowned international events, support global community groups, and more — all geared toward helping Agile practitioners reach their full potential and deliver innovative, Agile solutions.

Not yet a member? Sign up now