Agile Strategy: How to create a strategy ready for anything, reviewed

By @SimonCocking review of Agile Strategy: How to create a strategy ready for anything, available from Amazon here.

Agile Strategy is a practical guide for managers responsible for setting the strategic direction of their organisations in increasingly dynamic markets. Through its frameworks, tools and real-world examples, it explains how to transform business performance through greater organisational agility.  

LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT

STRATEGY

BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION
 

Why do we need a new book on strategy?
The pace of change is increasing, and strategic management is not keeping up. More than one in four (28%) strategic initiatives fail to meet their original goals and business intent[1], with insufficient agility identified as one of the top three barriers to successful strategy implementation[2].
The square peg of traditional strategy — vision, mission and blue-sky exercises; the separation of strategy from “implementation” — no longer fits the round hole of increasingly dynamic markets. It is time for a new approach.
How is Agile Strategy different? 

Agile Strategy distinguishes itself from other strategy and agile books currently available in that it is:

Designed for large organisations: Much of the writing on agile techniques addresses start-ups or small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which operate under very different constraints and freedoms. Agile Strategy is written for large organisations who want to be more agile.

Commercially-led: The approach is not a lightly airbrushed business rewrite of agile software development practices, but rather a fundamental rethinking of commercial and operational business practices.

Practical: It is anchored in innovative and robust concepts but designed as a practical “how-to” guide: a book for practitioners, written by a practitioner.

Results-focused: Whilst addressing a broad range of organisational topics, the book is grounded in the definition and delivery of measurable business benefits.

VUCA is one of the key concepts in this book (volatile, uncertain, complexity and ambiguity) and is an apt idea to keep in mind when approaching modern trends. Fernando aims to present a wide, flexible, and adaptable tool kit for people looking to deal with businesses looking to survive and thrive and 2019 and beyond.

Agile was often touted in software development as the wonderful, all purpose, fix everything solution to building new products. Its limitations were quickly exposed however, including those of top down pronouncements of going agile, with no support or backing for staff trying to implement the concepts within it. Fernando’s book represents a more nuanced, agile 3.0 toolkit, and in doing so, gives the methodology more chance for success.

See more from Fernando here ->

“Agile strategies are action-oriented, data-hungry and technology-inspired. This necessitates investment in systems and technology and, whilst determining where to invest remains challenging, underinvestment is increasingly not an option – see the cautionary tales of Toys R Us and Blockbuster for where that leads.”

More information about Irish Tech News and the Business Showcase

FYI the ROI for you is => We now get over 1.5 million monthly views, and up to 900k monthly unique visitors, from over 160 countries. We have over 860,000 relevant followers on Twitter on our various accounts & were recently described as Ireland’s leading online tech news site and Ireland’s answer to TechCrunch, so we can offer you a good audience!

Since introducing desktop notifications a short time ago, which notify readers directly in their browser of new articles being published, over 16000 people have now signed up to receive them ensuring they are instantly kept up to date on all our latest content. Desktop notifications offer a unique method of serving content directly to verified readers and bypass the issue of content getting lost in people’s crowded news feeds.

Drop us a line if you want to be featured, guest post, suggest a possible interview, or just let us know what you would like to see more of in our future articles. We’re always open to new and interesting suggestions for informative and different articles. Contact us, by email, twitter or whatever social media works for you.

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at Simon@IrishTechNews.ie or on Twitter: @SimonCocking