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    Why Agile Is Eating The World

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    JOVIN
    The document discusses how Agile management practices are allowing software and technology companies to outcompete traditional firms still using outdated top-down management styles. It argues that Agile, which focuses on delivering customer value through small, collaborative teams, is "eating the world" as more and more industries are disrupted by software. Both startups and large firms are seeing success by adopting Agile principles even if they don't use the label. However, the dominance of a few huge Agile technology companies could also threaten democracy, privacy and competition if not addressed.

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    Why Agile Is Eating The World

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    JOVIN
    42 views4 pages
    The document discusses how Agile management practices are allowing software and technology companies to outcompete traditional firms still using outdated top-down management styles. It argues that Agile, which focuses on delivering customer value through small, collaborative teams, is "eating the world" as more and more industries are disrupted by software. Both startups and large firms are seeing success by adopting Agile principles even if they don't use the label. However, the dominance of a few huge Agile technology companies could also threaten democracy, privacy and competition if not addressed.

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    Why Agile is Eating the World

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    Why Agile is Eating the World

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    The document discusses how Agile management practices are allowing software and technology companies to outcompete traditional firms still using outdated top-down management styles. It argues that Agile, which focuses on delivering customer value through small, collaborative teams, is "eating the world" as more and more industries are disrupted by software. Both startups and large firms are seeing success by adopting Agile principles even if they don't use the label. However, the dominance of a few huge Agile technology companies could also threaten democracy, privacy and competition if not addressed.

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    42 views4 pages

    Why Agile Is Eating The World

    Uploaded by

    JOVIN
    The document discusses how Agile management practices are allowing software and technology companies to outcompete traditional firms still using outdated top-down management styles. It argues that Agile, which focuses on delivering customer value through small, collaborative teams, is "eating the world" as more and more industries are disrupted by software. Both startups and large firms are seeing success by adopting Agile principles even if they don't use the label. However, the dominance of a few huge Agile technology companies could also threaten democracy, privacy and competition if not addressed.

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    Why Agile Is Eating The World

    Steve Denning
    Senior Contributor
    I write about Agile management, leadership, innovation & narrative.

    Great white shark at Isla Guadalupe, Mexico.


    IMAGE WIKIMEDIA COMMONS: BROCKEN INAGLORY
    In 2011, Marc Andreessen wrote his famous essay, “Why Software Is Eating the World,” in The
    Wall Street Journal, leading to the cliché that “every company needs to become a software
    company.” (A useful update by Jeetu Patel on the situation in 2016 is here: “Software is still
    eating the world.”)

    In one way, Andreessen’s 2011 article was remarkably prescient. In 2011, IT firms were looked
    down on by Wall Street. Andreessen was telling Wall Street: “Pay attention! These companies
    are more valuable than you think they are.” And Wall Street listened. In 2018, the five biggest
    companies in the world by market capitalization are IT firms: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google
    and Microsoft.

    But it turned out that Andreessen was only half right. It's not that all software is eating the
    world: General Electric has just proved that in a spectacular fashion: It invested heavily in
    software and the result. After five years, the CEO and his top lieutenants were terminated.
    Similar developments are under way at Intel, P&G and HP.

    It turns out that it’s not just software that’s’ eating the world. Firms are learning the hard way
    that software requires a different way of running the organization to be successful. Firms have to
    be nimble, adaptable, able to adjust on the fly to meet the shifting whims of a marketplace driven
    by the customer. This kind of management was—and is—beyond the capabilities of the
    lumbering industrial giants of the 20th Century. It is firms that are truly agile that are eating the
    world (whether or not they call themselves by the label "Agile").

    In fact, many of the big successful IT firms don't use the label “Agile” to describe the way they
    are run. Instead they talk about "the Google way" or "our startup culture." Of the big
    five, Microsoft is the exception in making an explicit commitment to the label “Agile.”

    But whatever label is used, the successful software firms are all recognizably implementing the
    substance of Agile—a focus on delivering value for customers, working in small teams in short
    cycles, and networked organizational arrangements rather than top-down bureaucracy and silos.
    It’s the firms that invest in software while retaining the top-down 20th Century management
    practices and structures that fail.

    As a result, the world is entering a new age: the age of Agile. An unstoppable revolution is now
    under way in our society, affecting almost everyone. Agile organizations are connecting
    everyone and everything, everywhere, all the time. They are capable of delivering instant,
    intimate, frictionless value on a large scale. They are creating a world in which people, insights,
    and money interact quickly, easily, and cheaply. For some firms, the revolution is uplifting and
    beautiful. For others, it is dark and threatening.

    Dazzling examples of the new way of running organizations are everywhere apparent. It’s not
    just the five biggest firms by market capitalization: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and
    Microsoft. It’s also firms like Airbnb, Etsy, Lyft, Menlo Innovations, Saab, Samsung, Spotify,
    Tesla, Uber and Warby Parker. At the same time, what is lifting some companies is killing
    others, as the big, lumbering market=leading bureaucracies miss game-changing transformations
    in industry after industry.
    Simply put, it’s Agile, not just software, that is eating the world. As usual, with any massive
    social change, there’s good news and bad news. Let’s begin with the good news.

    Good News #1: Customers Take Charge

    The winning firms are those that deliver instant, intimate, frictionless value for customers.. A
    world in which people, insights, and money interact quickly, easily, and cheaply is a world that
    has transformed human life—everything is easier and more convenient. It’s difficult for young
    people today even to imagine the world of just thirty years ago. How did people get by with no
    cell-phones and no Internet? It sounds downright archaic, like the world before the wheel was
    invented.

    Good News #2: The End Of Wage-Slavery

    With the great gains in material prosperity that were steadily generated by the Industrial
    Revolution from the late 1700s onward, it was easy to overlook the fact that they involved a dark
    bargain: in essence, large numbers of the human race agreed to sell themselves into wage
    slavery. Rightly or wrongly, they agreed to be treated like slaves while at work. While they were
    in the workplace, they agreed to follow orders, even if those orders were demeaning, stupid or
    just plain wrong, i.e. slavery. To be sure, there was some interesting work to be had in some
    parts of some organizations. But they were the exceptions. What was valued was diligent
    following of orders.

    So, although slavery was abolished in the political sphere by the mid-19thCentury, it continued in
    the workplace in the form of wage-slavery, even if few were willing to call it that. The reluctance
    to face this social reality stemmed from the economic fact that wage-slavery was useful: it led to
    a huge improvement in material prosperity for most of society, at least for most of the developed
    world. The fact that it led to spiritually crimped existence for much of the human race was just a
    regrettable side-effect of “progress.”

    Wage-slavery as an economic model thus continued from the late-18thCentury until the late
    20th Century. Then something went wrong. It turned out that wage-slaves could not deliver what
    the economy now needed. In a marketplace disrupted by globalization, deregulation, knowledge
    work and new technology, firms now required initiative, innovation, commitment, smarts,
    passion--the very opposite of wage-slaves.

    As a result, a new kind of management was needed to enable this new kind of worker. Some
    called this way of running an organization “Agile.” Some used other labels. But whatever it was
    called, it wasn’t just a new process. It was a fundamentally different way of running
    organizations. It was economically more productive. And it has immense potential benefit for the
    human spirit. It can create workplaces that enable human beings to contribute their full talents on
    something worthwhile and meaningful—creating value for other human beings.

    The end of slavery in the political sphere was a big deal. The end of wage-slavery in the
    workplace is also a pretty big deal.
    The Bad News: A New, Darker Gilded Age

    Yet as with any massive social change, there are also downsides. A summary of the issues is set
    out by David Dayen in an insightful article in American Prospect, “Big Tech: The New
    Predatory Capitalism.” He argues that “The tech giants are menacing democracy, privacy, and
    competition” and asks: “Can they be housebroken?”

    Thus, the successful exponents of software and Agile are becoming so successful that they are
    now emerging as a threat to a free society, in the much same way, mutatis mutandis, that the big
    industrial companies of the late 19th Century (rail, oil, steel) became a threat to society and had
    to be broken up the trust-busters like President Theodore Roosevelt. A similar scenario needs to
    occur with the big IT firms. That’s a job for the public sector. Dayen's article sets out the agenda.
    True, it's hard to see how all this will happen in the current political environment. But it has to
    happen, if a free society is to survive.

    Today’s Necessity: Embrace Agile

    For the private sector, waiting for anti-trust action is not a solution. Continuing the management
    practices and structures of the lumbering industrial giants of the 20th Century won’t cut the
    mustard. To survive, let alone thrive, firms today must learn to embrace the new business reality:
    they are entering the age of Agile.

    Read also:

    What is Agile?

    Surprise: Microsoft is Agile!

    Five New Forces in Innovation Strategy

    Why the World is Getting Better, but Hardly Anyone Knows it

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