Core Competencies of Business Agility

First, let’s accept that every business is a software business – even BMW no longer regards
itself as a car manufacturer but rather software on wheels. In a premium car, there are now
over 100 million lines of code; in an autonomous car, over 1 billion lines of code.

So achieving a state of Business Agility requires the entire organization and everyone
involved in delivering business solutions to use Lean and Agile practices.

Historically, Lean and Agile have just been applied to IT teams, and while Business Agility
requires Technical Agility, it also needs a business-level commitment to product and Value
Stream thinking.

There is no point in having super-efficient IT teams if it takes the team four months to
procure a new piece of kit that is required for their product. There is no point in having super-
efficient IT teams if it takes the team six months to replace a team member that has left and is
part of their agreed headcount.

Business Agility requires not just development and operations but also Finance, People, Sales
and Marketing, and Legal to all come together to use Lean and Agile practices. To achieve
Business Agility, the organization requires a significant degree of expertise across seven Core
Competencies. While each competency can deliver value independently, they are also
interdependent in that true Business Agility can be present only when the enterprise achieves
a meaningful state of mastery of all competencies.

The seven Core Competencies are as follows (see Figure 1.3):

• Team and Technical Agility (TTA)

• Agile Product Delivery (APD)
• Enterprise Solution Delivery (ESD)
• Lean-Portfolio Management (LPM)
• Organizational Agility (OA)
• Continuous Learning Culture (CLC)
• Lean-Agile Leadership (LAL)