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Agile Operating Model and Adaptive Organization

Build an enterprise-wide culture of agility and innovation so you can adapt quickly to a changing world.

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The IT Operating Model Framework of the Future

What is the correct way to organize IT work to deliver the most value to your business?

This question has been on the agenda of countless CXOs since the 1960s. Unfortunately, there is no one definitive answer that will work at all times in all environments and for all business objectives. But there are methodological approaches that will help you arrive at the correct answer and reap the benefits.

What are the key components to designing an adaptive organization?

From architecture to governance, ISG helps you design your target operating model by working with you on each of the below key components to bring the best results.

Product & Service Portfolio and Enterprise Architecture

Defining a portfolio of products and/or services and relevant architectures - all while recognizing that different types of business products, their business value and customer experience needs may drive different delivery models.

Delivery Models & Value Streams

Simplifying workflows across multiple value streams by applying the delivery models that enable the speed to market and business outcomes with the appropriate technology, provider landscape and team topologies necessary.

Organization, Team and Roles

Building organizational constructs that enable a business or customer-centric culture including business-aligned and flexible team environments with new empowered roles created while rationalizing IT services.

Technologies and Platforms

Focusing on the experience of the skilled worker and select platforms, enabling collaboration and free flow of information, and applying automation to repeatable process and flow.

Partner Ecosystem

Creating an ecosystem of partners where scarce skills are available and innovation is shared, engaging culturally across that ecosystem and managing the ongoing relationship.

Workforce Enablement

Acknowledging and enabling  workforce talent, culture, and continuous care by fostering a genuine employee engagement experience, employee-driven learning, new and compounding skills, adaptability and accountability.

Governance & Performance

Providing governance of the environment through appropriate controls, visibility of performance, legitimized shared accountabilities and clear decision rights.

Watch ISG's Ola Chowning Answer Top Questions About the Adaptive Organization

Stop doing agile; start being agile.

Becoming adaptive requires addressing all components of how you operate.

Make your business agile and resilient – move beyond software development agility and enable business, development and operational workstreams not just to survive but to thrive in environments where competition and customer requirements are constantly changing. ISG can help you design a target operating model (TOM) and partner ecosystem to enable an adaptive organization.

The Human Side of Digital

Addressing the “human side of digital” is critical to the success of any digital transformation. The world and our relationship to technology is changing so fast that it’s difficult to know how to best create a culture that is inclusive and creative.

When we help you apply neuroscience, the psychology of human dynamics and empathy to your digital transformation, we create a paradigm that fosters resilience and adaptability.

Get the Most Out of Your Transition

The initial months of a new outsourcing agreement — after signature and before steady state — are critical to the relationship's long-term success and value. But too often, neither party is sufficiently prepared to address the myriad challenges and surprises that arise when services transition to the new service provider. As a result, rather than building a positive foundation for partnership, transition issues sour the relationship. Is your retained organization sized appropriately? Is it prepared to manage work in a new way? How do you ensure your new provider delivers to performance requirements while still maintaining collaboration and innovation? Experts from ISG can help you assess alternatives, identify potential issues and prepare for the unexpected.

Enterprise Agility

To be competitive today, enterprises must use technology in ways that will generate the velocity they need to respond to a changing market. But not all business functions move at the same speed.

Enterprise agility allows an enterprise to respond at the right time to the right business functions. When enterprise agility serves as a fundamental principle of your operating model, you have what you need to seize opportunities as you transform into a digital business.

Benefits of an Agile Enterprise

  • Align business functions and digital products and services to the customer’s journey
  • Define the velocity needs of the business and determine the right technology and delivery models to meet those needs
  • Determine your current adoption of Agile and DevOps practices, including the skills of team members, and identify opportunities for improvement
  • Assess your current business culture and establish an organizational change plan to address the cultural change needed for enterprise agility
  • Plan pilots, flagships and front runners to serve as springboards for enabling enterprise agility across your organization
  • Manage your environment and leverage capabilities across multiple delivery models so you can continuously improve
  • Ensure your sourcing and partnership model fosters innovation and responsiveness
  • Maintain control of your digital landscape with proven governance practices that optimize your investments


Advance Your Operations and Delivery

Your partner ecosystem is essential to boosting your capabilities and streamlining global delivery. Contracting external providers where you most need them is key to transformation. But sourcing and transformation ROI and business case realization comes down to how you organize yourself to optimize and leverage those relationships. 

ISG can help you design a TOM that makes the most of the latest technology solutions and provider services in the market. DevSecOps and site reliability engineering (SRE) are not enough without persistent team topologies with your providers. You need to structure yourself to achieve continuous business outcomes with your partners.  As the pioneers of the sourcing market, we understand which team topologies work and which don’t, how to boost agility in the areas that need it, reconfigure teams to integrate new skills, modernize infrastructure and applications to facilitate a faster pace of work and reimagine processes to spur performance gains. 

The market is changing. The competition is changing.

Your business models and operations must change with them – or risk losing competitive advantage.

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