Agile 2
by Cliff BergAgile 2 defines a broad range of agility-promoting behaviors. Unlike the many “Agile frameworks”, Agile 2 is about behavior, culture, and knowledge. Knowing what behaviors predominate in your organization is essential for understanding how agile you really are, and what might need to change, at the levels of culture, behavior, and knowledge.
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An Agile Framework Will Not Give You Agility
Organizational agility results behavior—not from copying someone’s workflow process. That’s why Agile 2 focuses on behavior, and the Agile 2 assessment measures behavioral norms.
There’s No Shortcut—Culture Must Be Addressed
Behavior and culture are impacted more by management leadership style than by any other factor. That’s why agility begins with leadership—not with development teams.
You Must Change How the Leaders Lead
Senior management leadership style has the largest impact on behavior and culture. This has been proven in countless studies. That’s why agility begins at the top with senior leadership—not at the bottom with development teams.
What Is Agile 2?
- Their fields of expertise were:
- Leadership
- Organization Change
- Behavioral Psychology
- Lean Product Design
- Human Resources and PeopleOps
- Engineering
- Programming, DevOps
- Program Management (in both an Agile and traditional context)
- Professional Coaching
- Agile
The Source of Agility
The behaviors that create agility need to be supported by the organization’s culture: how people are expected to behave by senior managers. People behave in the ways that are expected of them. They also need to have knowledge of solution patterns for solving problems: if they only know PMP methods, they will use those; if they know Lean and Flow approaches they will use those.
Sample Survey Items
Leadership
Senior leaders get the right people together to resolve cross-functional issues that go beyond the individual or team level.Product Design
We actively collect and use customer data or feedback from customers to improve product features.People
Within product development teams, specialists and generalists are valued and treated as equals.Technical and Business Fluency
Our technical leaders genuinely understand our business.Planning and Transformation
We validate new ideas through small experiments whenever possible.Flow
We adjust how we work in order to improve security, for example by reviewing trends over time in our product security incident rate.Sample Survey Items
Leadership
Senior leaders get the right people together to resolve cross-functional issues that go beyond the individual or team level.Product Design
We actively collect and use customer data or feedback from customers to improve product features.People
Within product development teams, specialists and generalists are valued and treated as equals.Top Features
Leverage the Agile 2 model for agility-promoting behaviors.
Give your people a voice – and allow them to express where you can do the most good for your organization.
Gain insights expeditiously - the results provide “smoking guns” for problem areas.
Using our analysis guide, the results are easily matched to the impact on things like agility and quality.
Leverage the Agile 2 model for agility-promoting behaviors.
Give your people a voice – and allow them to express where you can do the most good for your organization.
Gain insights expeditiously - the results provide “smoking guns” for problem areas.
Using our analysis guide, the results are easily matched to the impact on things like agility and quality.
Cliff Berg
Founder and Managing Partner
Stephen Villaescusa
Partner
Howard Wiener
Partner
Raj Nagappan
Partner
Agile 2 Academy was founded by some of the authors of Agile 2.
Agile 2 Academy’s mission is to help organizations to use the ideas of Agile 2 well. We help organizations to increase agility, performance, speed, and efficiency. This is done through workshops, training, and coaching that elevate people’s knowledge and capabilities. Our methods are informed by proven approaches from leadership theory, behavioral psychology, cognitive science, and operations research.
Agile 2 is primarily a behavioral model; Agile 2 Academy has brought organizational culture into the mix, and defined the groundbreaking Constructive Agility model, which explains agility as arising from behavior, organizational culture, and knowledge of Lean and Flow work patterns.
There is no “certification mill” for Agile 2. We are authentic in our approach and methods.
Our leadership are shown above.
Cliff Berg was the lead author of the book Agile 2: The Next Iteration of Agile. He is a tech entrepreneur—the company he founded in 1995 grew to 200 people by 2000. He has degrees from Cornell in Operations Research, Nuclear Engineering, and Physics.
Stephen Villaescusa has led Continuous Improvement, Supplier Improvement Lean, Six Sigma, and other transformation initiatives with hundreds of companies around the world. He has a BS in Business Administration from the University of Arizona and has completed executive certificate programs at Columbia University (Personnel) and the UCLA Graduate School of Business (Procurement).
Howard Wiener has helped to define and implement transformation programs integrating diverse technologies, redesigned business processes, and organization restructuring. He has a MS in Business Management from Carnegie-Mellon University and a BA in Economics from Ohio Wesleyan University.
Raj Nagappan was also an author of the book Agile 2: The Next Iteration of Agile. He has over 20 years experience in software engineering, and holds a PhD in Machine Learning and Computer Science.
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