Business Agility Library
At the Business Agility Institute (BAI), we believe that the next generation of companies are here. And they are agile, innovative and dynamic – perfectly designed to thrive in today’s unpredictable markets. Our mission is to advocate for, connect, & inspire these organizations to co-create an environment of knowledge & trust so that every company in the world can be part of the future of business.
This library of knowledge reflects the real-world challenges and stories of our members. It is intended to be a systemic, yet living, interactive document that provided companies with insights into business agility as well as practical guides and solutions on their journey. If you’d like to contribute to the Library – read our “Getting Started Guide” first. This will cover the intent, licenses, and approach.
The Library is not designed to be read as a book. Rather it is an interactive guide that allows you to find the relevant information you need any point in time. Therefore, it is designed around 4 separate entry points;
 Business Agility Domain |  Industry & Sector |  Function & Capability |  Journey |
So, if you’re the head of HR, then you’ll spend most of your time in the HR Function section. If you’re in the Energy sector, you’ll spend most of your time in the Utilities Industry. If you’re running a restructure, you might go straight to the Structural Agility domain.
There is a lot of content that exists in multiple places. Therefore, the content in the Library is defined as either “guidance” or an “insight”. Guidance is specific to an element (e.g. Structural Agility, HR Business Agility or Utilities Sector). Insights are common information that are tagged to multiple elements (e.g. a case study could belong to all 3).
Unless otherwise specified, all content within the Business Agility Library is licensed as Creative Commons (Share Alike + Attribution).
Underlying Principles
The sad truth is that there are very few truly agile corporations. While there are often agile teams, projects and people (even outside of ICT), for an organisation to be completely agile requires such a mindshift that very few have attempted it.
Until such time as there is a community-driven Business Agility manifesto, the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto apply across all areas of the organisation with one minor modification.
We are uncovering better ways of delivering value by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- [Value creation] over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
Guidance
Customer
Customer is a very broad term. Depending on the organisational context it could mean; a paying client for a private organisation, a citizen for a public sector organisation, or an abstraction (like “the environment” or “the community”) for a NPO (NonProfit Organization).
Regardless of who your customer is they all have one thing in common. They provide us with our purpose.
Connections
The first three domains of business agility are part of the Connections Dimension and govern the relationships that form both within and outside the organisation.
- Structural Agility that defines the relationships between individuals, teams & divisions, to
- Leadership Agility that defines the relationship with authority and
- Market Agility that defines the relationship with the users and the wider market.
Work
The next three domains of business agility are part of the Work Dimension. These three domains operate in concert to define how an agile organisation works.
- Technical Agility at the individual activity level, to
- Process Agility at the value stream level, and scaling to
- Enterprise Agility at the organisational level.
Mindset
The third and final dimension is concerned with addressing the cultural domains. These are the key characteristics of an agile organisation;
Supporting Functions
Customer Facing Functions
GRC Functions
Operations Functions
- Case Studies
- Books & Reviews
- Further Reading
- External Links
- Supporting Frameworks
- Glossary
- Quotes
Contributors
This has been a joint effort by numerous Business Agility practitioners and experts around the world. I’d like to take the time to thank AfriKA M. Ndoto, Andrew Boyd, Asshok Singh, Ben Hogan, Bret Nelson, Boryana Manolova, Chris Chan, Chris Edwards, Dan Chesterman, David Luke, Dawna Jones, Derek Winter, Diego Espejo, Drew P., Ewan O’Leary, Frederic Ducros, Gopal Katragadda, Hamish Taylor, Harry Nieboer, Helen Snitkovsky, Henrico Dolfing, Jeff Kosciejew, Jeremy Pullen, Johan Tuulse, Kashif Heyat, Krishna Kumar, Larry Cooper, Malcolm Anderson, Marc-Andre Langlais, Marcelo Espejo, Mia Horrigan, Mitul Ghosh, Nat Tanner, Nick Argall, Peta Guy, Peter Merel, Pete Morris, Renee Troughton, Scott Ambler, Sebastian Voss, Sergey Rogachev, Shane Hastie, ShriKant Vashishtha, Sofia Woloschin, Stelio Verzera, Steve Pruneau, Steve Tendon, Steven Mak, Sunish Chabba, Tahlia Oliver, Thomas Walenta and Yura Malishenko.
- Assets
- Assurance
- Audit
- Banking and Finance
- Books & Reviews
- Case Studies
- Collaboration Mindset
- Conference Videos
- Connections
- Customer
- Customer Facing
- Digital
- Domains of Business Agility
- Energy
- Enterprise Agility
- External Links
- Finance
- Functions
- Further Reading
- Glossary
- Government
- GRC - Governance, Risk & Compliance
- HR
- Industries
- Insurance
- IT
- Leadership Agility
- Learning Mindset
- Legal
- Manufacturing
- Market Agility
- Marketing
- Mindset
- Operations
- Ownership Mindset
- PMO
- Process Agility
- Product
- Quotes
- Sales
- Service Desk
- Services
- Structural Agility
- Supporting
- Supporting Frameworks
- Technical Agility
- Transformations
- Work
