Agility demanded, but not exemplified

In almost all companies, there are managers who have mastered agile methods and have shown that they can successfully implement agile projects. However, the conversion of the corporate culture and the restructuring of the organizational structure to agile working or hybrid models is still progressing too slowly. For example, top management often calls for agile working, but often does not even live the agile working methods and the necessary methods themselves.

Thus, cultural change remains one of the greatest challenges in agile transformation. Middle management, on the other hand, which has long struggled with agile working, is now adapting better and better and has gained significant methodological expertise.

These are the findings of the Lünendonk special analysis "Agile Transformation: Doing Agile versus Being Agile," which was conducted as part of the Lünendonk Study 2020 "The Market for IT Consulting and IT Service in Germany. For this, over 200 IT executives from upper midsize companies as well as from large companies and corporations in various industries were surveyed. Even in extreme situations, agile companies are able to react very quickly to a changed demand situation, implement solutions and adapt to the new conditions.

But to do this, they need to transform their previous ways of working to agile practices. Investments made in the past few years in agile transformation are now making themselves felt as a result of the corona pandemic: One-third of the digital and IT managers surveyed said that managers in their own companies can successfully plan and implement projects and product developments in an agile manner.

A further 57 percent have this methodological competence, at least in part. Although agile method competence is already quite high among executives, there is still a need to catch up when it comes to implementing agile methods. This discrepancy between Doing Agile and Being Agile is reflected in the fact that two-thirds of top management are driving the agile transformation forward, but only 58 percent are living the agile procedures themselves.