Successful Operations are Agile Operations

Today’s successful businesses are agile and adaptable.   

The pace at which modern business operates is like the speed of light — what used to take hours, days, weeks, months or years can now be accomplished in seconds.  

Technology shortens the time it takes to bring a product to market and helps alleviate consumers’ pain points in a record time. Conventional IT infrastructure management methods can impede the rapid delivery of modern solutions.   

Agile approaches can improve efficiency, speed, and quality.  

The Agile Business Model  

The capacity to move quickly, effectively, and efficiently without losing momentum toward the final objective is what we mean when we talk about agility.   

For a company model to be considered agile, its employees must have the mindset that they are competent and have the authority to make choices swiftly without interference from higher-ups.  An agile business model maintains the freedom and flexibility necessary to do so.  

The Push for Agility 

In the past, traditional IT infrastructure practices made sense.   

However, recent technological advancements have rendered manual configuration work obsolete. Consumers expect to interact with businesses digitally. Therefore, modernizing IT infrastructure organizations is essential to accelerate deployments and hasten go-to-market times. 

From Gartner®: 

“I&O leaders are under huge pressure to improve agility, but little guidance exists about using agile practices to deliver infrastructure services. This research fills that gap with actionable advice and, even more important, a linked story distilled from thousands of client interactions.”

Business Challenges to Infrastructure Agility Adoption 

• Customer needs are misunderstood, and I&O prioritizes technology instead 
• Unclear overview of workflows causes cost overages, mistakes and raise costs 
• Agile ways of work are continual. Short-term agility initiatives rarely succeed 

Four adjustments to ensure IT infrastructure organizations be nimbler and more efficient:  

The first of these transformations includes managing infrastructure like application developers handle code by leveraging software to quickly and reliably create environments.    

The other three are organizational:  

1. Establishing cross-functional teams (or “squads”) of well-rounded infrastructure engineers who use agile methodologies 

1. Streamlining procedures for delivering infrastructure services 

1.  Enhancing collaboration between infrastructure and development teams 

In the past, I&O leaders spent too much time on internal optimizations, which made it hard to find ways to be more agile.   

Gartner ® research director Hank Marquis says, “Most I&O leaders are in companies that are still structured around conventional IT domains/silos that don’t sufficiently support modern requirements like bimodal IT, digital business, and digital business platforms.” Marquis recommends I&O leaders follow five steps to build an agile, high-performance and business-aligned I&O organization.  

 The following is an overview of what to expect with an agile methodology: 

1. A robust sense of ownership and responsibility on the part of workers 

1. Fewer problems, gaps, and paperwork. This makes product development or service delivery relevant and tuned into customers’ wants. 

1. An environment in which people and groups feel valuable and respected, resulting in higher levels of job satisfaction 

1. The potential liberation from compartmentalized thought, which impedes progress 

1. Flexibility enables superior product and service delivery to customers 

1. Improves the odds of finding possible answers 

1. Teams can self-organize into applicable configurations 

1. Prioritizing relationships is particularly important when working in highly regulated industries or with enterprise models relying on processes 

The capacity of a business to swiftly and successfully adapt its operations in response to shifting market conditions and evolving customer requirements is referred to as its “operational agility.”  It is one of the most essential parts of running a business today, and it can mean the difference between success and failure. The company’s infrastructure and operations leaders define the level of operational agility.  

Create an I&O agility program to expand on the status quo 

Many leaders in IT operations and infrastructure (I&O) have spent so much time optimizing internal processes that they have created rigid infrastructure processes and one-size-fits-all service “pipelines,” preventing them from taking advantage of opportunities to become more agile.   

Gartner ® Recommendations  

• I&O leaders must understand and meet customer needs by improving communication and using journey maps 
• To improve task flow efficiency, apply Kanban boards and practices to cut down on interruptions  
• Improve infrastructure capabilities by implementing agile practices to fit specific I&O situations  
• Develop skills over time and continually improve  
• Enhance capacities over time by teaching the principles of learning and continuous improvement

Betts, Daniel, Ennaciri, Hassan, Spafford, George, Roger Williams. (2022, January 20). Gartner Improve Infrastructure Agility — A Story for a New Era 
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