Article

Why an agile transformation office is your ticket to real and lasting impact

– This structure defines goals, ensures that agility’s principles stick, and keeps the focus on value. Three design decisions are the key.
Discussion Paper - McKinsey Global Institute

Getting tangible about intangibles: The future of growth and productivity?
– Companies that master the deployment of intangibles investment will be well positioned to outperform their peers.
Survey

The impact of agility: How to shape your organization to compete
– Insights from over 2,000 global respondents reveal the recipe for an agile transformation that delivers real business impact.
Article

The five core IT shifts of scaled agile organizations
– In pursuing an agile transformation, CEOs and CIOs can find common ground in five IT shifts that can enable traditional players... to compete with digital disrupters.
Article

Agility in the time of COVID-19: Changing your operating model in an age of turbulence
– Can organizations be transformed while employees are working remotely? Four real-life stories suggest that they can.
Article

Doing vs being: Practical lessons on building an agile culture
– Four global success stories offer insights and lessons learned on achieving organizational agility.
Article

Agility to action: Operationalizing a value-driven agile blueprint
– To successfully transition to an agile operating model, business leaders should focus on four questions.
Article

An operating model for the next normal: Lessons from agile organizations in the crisis
– Companies with agile practices embedded in their operating models have managed the impact of the COVID-19 crisis better than their... peers. Here’s what helped them cope.
Article

Lean management or agile? The right answer may be both
– Through thoughtful design, agile and lean management can be the perfect match for companies in search of lasting performance improvement.

Featured video

Video

Insights to Impact

McKinsey partner Christopher Handscomb describes key insights from “An operating model for the next normal: Lessons from agile organizations in the crisis.”
Learn more about Christopher

Interviews

Interview

Agile’s next level: ABN AMRO’s hybrid cloud–DevSecOps transformation
Interview

Building a digital New York Times: CEO Mark Thompson
Interview

How Allianz Turkey created an agile organization
Interview - McKinsey Quarterly

How the British Army’s operations went agile

Podcast

Article

The journey to agile: How companies can become faster, more productive, and more responsive

– Agile operating models are characterized by rapid learning and decision-making cycles. Here’s how organizations can use agile practices to transform their organizations.

Agile Fundamentals

The five trademarks of agile organizations

Agile organizations—of any size and across industries—have five key elements in common.
Read more
Article

The journey to an agile organization
– You know what an agile organization is, and why it’s important. But figuring out how to pull off an agile transformation... is another question.
Article

How to mess up your agile transformation in seven easy (mis)steps
– The journey to become agile is challenging. But your organization can avoid some common pitfalls that we have seen companies encounter,... including failing to create buy-in around an aspiration and forgetting to put culture first.
Article

How to select and develop individuals for successful agile teams: A practical guide
– What personality traits and values help agile teams bloom? Discover ways to identify these when recruiting and coaching your people.
Article - McKinsey Quarterly

The agile manager
– Who manages in an agile organization? And what exactly do they do?
Article - McKinsey Quarterly

Leading with inner agility
– Disruptive times call for transformational leaders with a knack for addressing complex problems. To navigate effectively, we must... learn to let go—and become more complex ourselves.
Article

Leading agile transformation: The new capabilities leaders need to build 21st-century organizations
– To build and lead an agile organization, it’s crucial that senior leaders develop new mind-sets and capabilities to transform... themselves, their teams, and the organization.
Article

Building agile capabilities: The fuel to power your agile ‘body’
– To move your organization from targeted experimentation to driving agility at scale, it’s crucial to focus on agile capability... building.
Article

Performance management in agile organizations
– Performance management is tough enough in traditional organizations; in agile organizations, three changes are essential to success.

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Industry Perspectives

Interview

Driving business impact through customer centricity and digital agility
– Sun Life US focused on the client experience and aligned IT with the business to drive a transformation in its technological capabilities.
Article

Digital public services: How to achieve fast transformation at scale
– Digitizing services helps governments meet public expectations and become more efficient and resilient. The task is complex, but... a tried-and-true formula can help them move faster and with limited resources.
Article

Implementing agile ways of working in IT to improve citizen experience
– Government agencies are under pressure to deliver more and better services to their stakeholders. Agile ways of working can be... transformative.

Regional Perspectives

Article

Organizing for speed: Agile as a means to transformation in Japan
– Japanese working practices may help or hinder the adaptation of agile approaches that can increase an organization’s speed... and customer centricity. Addressing five main areas can allow leaders to master the transition to enterprise agility.
Article

Agile resilience in the UK: Lessons from COVID-19 for the ‘next normal’
– Agility has been a useful attribute for many global and UK-based organizations weathering the COVID-19 crisis. Here’s how... they can build on agile practices for more long-term operational resilience.

From our Organization Blog

Blog Post

Real-world lessons to jumpstart an agile culture shift
– These four lessons, drawn from real-life success stories, can give your organization’s agile transformation a boost.
Blog Post

Quarterly Business Review: How to extract benefits beyond transparency
– QBRs can bring immense value to an organization. However, inefficiencies often occur, and there are five reasons behind these... suboptimal operations.
Blog Post

Fitter, flatter, faster: How unstructuring your organization can unlock massive value
– Organizing for the future requires adopting an operating model that is more dynamic, more flexible, and less structured than most... companies use today. Following five steps can help companies unlock value by making their structure more agile.
Blog Post

Become flexible and speed up with a helix model (part one)
– The secret to this model’s success lies in disaggregating the traditional split of management tasks into two lines of accountability... that are roughly equal in power and authority, but fundamentally different.
Blog Post

What does a helix reorganization look like? (part two)
– The helix organization model creates flexibility, can streamline roles and responsibilities, simplify decision-making processes,... and empower employees.
Blog Post

Four considerations for helix success beyond structure (part three)
– Transitioning to the helix organization model requires significant changes in how an organization operates and how leaders manage,... in turn demanding a relinquishing of control, and a healthy dose of humility.