Doing Agile Right

Agile has the power to transform work — but only if it’s implemented the right way. For decades, business leaders have been painfully aware of a huge chasm: They aspire to create nimble, flexible enterprises, but their day-to-day reality is silos, sluggish processes and stalled innovation. Today, agile is hailed as the essential bridge across this chasm, with the potential to transform a company and catapult it to the head of the pack. Not so fast. In this clear-eyed, indispensable book, Bain & Company thought leader Darrell Rigby and his colleagues Sarah Elk and Steve Berez provide a much-needed reality check. They dispel the myths and misconceptions that have accompanied agile’s rise to prominence — the idea that it can reshape an organization all at once, for instance, or that it should be used in every function and for all types of work.

Doing Agile Right: Transformation Without Chaos
Darrell Rigby, Sarah Elk and Steve Berez
Harvard Business Review Press
On shelves and online
256 pages