Nurturing Agility in Austin: Insights from Agile City Limits 2022

We had a blast at the Keep Austin Agile event this week! Our session, Agile City Limits, featured a special guest appearance from Mathew McCut-out. It was a fantastic experience!

At Agile Velocity, we prioritize achieving business outcomes over simply following practices. From our experience, the most successful transformations are those aligned with a compelling purpose for change, focusing on the business outcomes you aim to achieve by implementing Agile. The Path to Agility® approach has identified nine key business outcomes organizations often seek when starting an Agile journey:

1. Employee Engagement: Employees feel more satisfied with their work, are willing to go the extra mile, and are passionate and committed to the organization.
2. Customer Satisfaction: Customers are happy with the experience, benefits, and outcomes of your product or service.
3. Quality: The product or service meets market expectations for usability, reliability, and more.
4. Speed: The time taken to deliver an idea to the market.
5. Predictability: Teams maintain a predictable delivery cadence, helping the business make informed decisions.
6. Innovation: New ideas and creative thoughts provide better solutions for new requirements, unarticulated needs, or known market needs.
7. Market Responsiveness: The organization’s ability to quickly pivot to meet changing market demands.
8. Productivity: Increasing the realized business value while maintaining or reducing costs.
9. Continuous Improvement: The organization’s relentless pursuit of optimizations in all business functions.

During the event, we asked attendees to “Choose their Headliner,” or select their primary business outcome. The top choice was Customer Satisfaction. This is frequently a focus because it must be earned, not given. When customers are satisfied—or even better, love your product or service—it means your organization is solving real problems for them. It shows you’re always looking for better ways to engage with and understand your customers’ needs. This focus provides clarity and helps you prioritize what is essential, allowing you to say ‘no’ to distractions and ‘yes’ to the right actions.

The Path to Agility map outlines the key Agile outcomes your organization should focus on for each of the nine business outcomes. By leveraging this approach, we streamline your entire transformation process to focus on achieving your goals. You can learn more about our transformation approach on our website.

What’s your driving business outcome and why? Share your thoughts in the comments below.