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Agility
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- September 2019
- Case
Teaming Up to Win the Rail Deal at GE (A)
By: Amy Edmondson, Ranjay Gulati and Rachna Tahilyani
In 2012, Nalin Jain, then head of GE aviation for South Asia, was given the added responsibility for GE’s transportation business in India, including bidding for a $2.5 billion contract to manufacture, service and maintain 1,000 diesel locomotives for state owned... View Details
- June 2019 (Revised February 2020)
- Case
Eric Hawkins Leading Agile Teams @ Digitally-Born AppFolio (A)
By: Tsedal Neeley, Paul Leonardi and Michael Norris
Eric Hawkins, director of engineering at AppFolio—a digital technology firm that offered cloud-based business software to small and medium sized companies—was shocked by an unusual request from his senior leadership team. Could Hawkins and one of his agile teams build... View Details
- June 2019 (Revised February 2020)
- Supplement
Eric Hawkins Leading Agile Teams @ Digitally-Born AppFolio (B)
By: Tsedal Neeley, Paul Leonardi and Michael Norris
Supplements the (A) case, HBS No. 419-066, and provides information about what happened after the (A) case ends. View Details
- May 2019
- Teaching Note
Transformation at ING (A), (B), & (C)
By: William R. Kerr and Jordan Bach-Lombardo
Teaching Note for HBS Nos. 818-077, 818-078, 818-121. View Details
- February 2019
- Technical Note
Can Multiunit Organizations Remain Agile as They Grow?
By: Tatiana Sandino
This note discusses how multiunit organizations incorporate flexibility into their management control systems, some by authorizing all or a select number of their dispersed units to make input and process decisions, some by investing in data-analytic technologies to... View Details
- 2018
- Chapter
The Strategic Imperative of Psychological Safety and Organizational Error Management
By: Amy C. Edmondson and Paul Verdin
Despite discussion in the management literature about agile organizations or learning organizations, many large organizations are top-down, slow to change, and fraught with obstacles to learning. We describe “strategy-as-learning” to contrast with the traditional... View Details
- May 4, 2018
- Article
Continuous Development Will Change Organizations as Much as Agile Did
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Samuel Clemens
It's not just for tech companies and startups. View Details
- January 2018 (Revised May 2018)
- Case
Transformation at ING (A): Agile
By: William R. Kerr, Federica Gabrieli and Emer Moloney
In December 2017, Vincent van den Boogert, CEO of ING in the Netherlands, was reflecting upon the company’s “agile” transformation, a reorganization of work that had been critical to respond to and exceed rapidly changing customer expectations. Launched in 2015 at the... View Details
- January 2018
- Supplement
Transformation at ING (B): Innovation
By: William R. Kerr, Federica Gabrieli and Emer Moloney
Supplement to HBS No. 818-077. Together with the agile methodology, innovation at ING was an enabler for the company’s purpose of empowering people to stay a step ahead in life and business. The case explores ING's innovation priorities and strategy as well as the... View Details
- January 2018 (Revised August 2020)
- Background Note
Continuous Software Development: Agile's Successor
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Samuel Clemens and Olivia Hull
In recent years, the twin software development methodologies of continuous delivery and continuous deployment have risen to prominence in the start-up world and beyond. These methods have enabled technology companies large and small to accelerate their product... View Details
Keywords: Continuous Improvement; Continuous Development; Continuous Delivery; Continuous Integration; Product Development Processes; Computer Programming; Agile; Waterfall; Software Applications; Software Engineering; Applications and Software; Information Technology; Technological Innovation; Product Development; Customer Focus and Relationships; Entrepreneurship; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Structure; Quality; Product Marketing; Product; Infrastructure; Information Infrastructure; Computer Industry; Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; Web Services Industry; Massachusetts; Boston
- 2017
- Other Article
Designing an Agile Software Portfolio Architecture: The Impact of Coupling on Performance
By: Alan MacCormack and Robert Lagerstrom
The modern industrial corporation encompasses a myriad of different software applications, each of which must work in concert to deliver functionality to end-users. However, the increasingly complex and dynamic nature of competition in today’s product-markets dictates... View Details
- 2017
- Working Paper
Digital Agility: The Impact of Software Portfolio Architecture on IT System Evolution
By: Alan MacCormack, Robert Lagerström, Martin Mocker and Carliss Y. Baldwin
The modern industrial firm increasingly relies on software to support its competitive position. However, the uncertain and dynamic nature of today’s global marketplace dictates that this software be continually evolved and adapted to meet new business challenges. This... View Details
- October 2016
- Technical Note
Product Development Fundamentals
By: Marco Iansiti, Michael Toffel, Kerry Herman and Julia Kelley
This note introduces key managerial issues in new product development. It describes the product development funnel and alternative approaches to structuring product development teams including functional, lightweight, heavyweight, and autonomous/dedicated teams, which... View Details
- 2015
- Book
What Great Service Leaders Know and Do: Creating Breakthroughs in Service Firms
Based on decades of collective field experiences, the authors present anecdotal evidence in support of eight things that great service leaders know and do. Great service leaders know that (1) leading a breakthrough service is different, and they take steps to ensure... View Details
- 2014
- Book
Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for a Faster-Moving World
By: John P. Kotter
Based on the award-winning article in Harvard Business Review, from global leadership expert John Kotter. It's a familiar scene in organizations today: a new competitive threat or a big opportunity emerges. You quickly create a strategic initiative in response and... View Details
- January–February 2014
- Article
Building a Game-Changing Talent Strategy
By: Douglas A. Ready, Linda A. Hill and Robert J. Thomas
When most of the world's financial services giants were stumbling and retrenching in the aftermath of the 2008 recession, the asset management firm BlackRock was busy charting a course for growth. Its revenues, profits, and stock price all performed consistently... View Details
- 2013
- Book
The Art of Negotiation: How to Improvise Agreement in a Chaotic World
By: Michael Wheeler
A member of the world-renowned Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School introduces the powerful next-generation approach to negotiation. For many years, two approaches to negotiation have prevailed: the "win-win" method exemplified in Getting to Yes by Roger... View Details
Keywords: Negotiation
- November 2012 (Revised August 2014)
- Case
Cisco in 2012: Reorganizing for Efficiency and Flexibility
By: Ranjay Gulati, Alison Berkley Wagonfeld and Luciana Silvestri
In 2012, Cisco was under intense pressure to show results: growth in its core business was decelerating and a number of exploratory ventures and acquisitions had not proven as profitable as expected. CEO John Chambers vowed to restore the company's health in a way that... View Details
- 2012
- Working Paper
When Supply-Chain Disruptions Matter
By: William Schmidt and Ananth Raman
Supply-chain disruptions have a material effect on company value, but this impact can vary considerably. Thus, it is important for managers and investors to recognize the types of disruptions and the organizational factors that lead to the worst outcomes. Prior... View Details
- 2010
- Book
The New Science of Retailing: How Analytics Are Transforming the Supply Chain and Improving Performance
By: Marshall Fisher and Ananth Raman
Retailers today are drowning in data but lacking in insight: They have huge volumes of information at their disposal. But they're unsure of how to sort through it and use it to make smart decisions. The result? They're struggling with profit-sapping supply chain... View Details