Book Review: The Agile Enterprise

Agile is one of those terms I am sure every technology professional has come into contact with. Seeing it on a job posting, or seeing Agile mentioned and how it has worked for an enterprise company. Recently I purchased a Project Management bundle on Humble Bundle called “The Agile Enterprise” by Mario E. E. Moreira. and this book has helped me to understand what Agile fully means and how it should be used within a enterprise company.

My Synopsis of The Agile Enterprise

Agile is a term used for enterprise companies that are focused on building a strong customer focused experience. While also building on the idea that employees are valued and trusted to be self organized and focus on getting a job well done not just completed. Agile is about creating a place where the higher ups are not just there to see the job done but to be a mentor, and a leader who inspires their employees to help push the product further by allowing free flowing information throughout the company.

What I Took Away

I think one of the biggest things I took from this agile book was the fact that the idea of being in an Agile organization wasn’t about just getting the job done, but getting it done by learning and expanding. Customer feedback is crucial and ideas are not shunned away. Becoming an agile organization is easier said then done, its a full 180 on some companies cause it isn’t about just getting the work done but how can you improve upon the product, companies and enabling customers to help build the product as well by listening to customers, getting feedback through surveys and addressing the problems instead of trying to think of where a product should go.

In an Agile organization Managers are leaders, they aren’t talkers, they are leaders, and mentors. It means that if someone is having trouble with a certain area, you teach them and help the overall organization without being that person that leads from the back. This type of structure also requires a mindset change in people, instead of working alone and having someone off in a cubical minding their own business, everyone knows what everyone is working on. From the leaders, coders, marketers, NOTHING is siloed cause there can be a lot of breakdown in communication if marketing, dev and sales are completely siloed. Take the scene from Silicon Valley where Richard is talking to the sales and product team and everyone is trying to figure out what to sale the product is and someone said it was going to be this thing vs that thing.

I think probably the biggest thing that is a definite change of focus for any company is becoming a learning company and a community. The reason for this tough shift of focus is most companies tend to be more geared towards “knowing” everything, whereas a agile company is learning and figuring out how to continuous add value to the organization and focuses on pushing this idea of self organizational learning vs sticking to a single solution that has worked out for them.

The only downside to this book is that it can be quite wordy and long winded at times with trying to repeat the same concepts over and over again and I am not sure if the author is trying to pull a Marge Simpson with trying to repeat items in order for it to stick into your head. There are also parts of this book that can be skipped depending on what position you are currently in such as for example the accounting sections is something I just skipped cause I am not an accountant.

Who Is This Book For

I would say pretty much anyone in the tech world, especially product managers, senior developers, scrum masters, CEO’s and other business leaders. This is one of those books that the higher ups should have to read due to companies saying they are “agile” but its more in talk than practice cause in reading it, becoming Agile and changing that cemented mindset can and will take time to change. I also didn’t realize that I have worked with several Agile companies in the past due to how they would push learning while doing and being told not to be afraid of asking questions if it helps speed up the process.

Conclusion

Upon reading this book I found myself intrigued by the writers experience with Agile development in the enterprise world and I am becoming to wonder how I can help craft a more focused Agile experience in the consulting world. If you are jumping into the enterprise world, or looking to shift your company to become Agile I would highly suggest this book and pay attention to the sections about the Idea Pipeline and Building the learning experience as well as defining success cause those were the chapters that really stuck with me. Anyways until next time…
See you Space Cowboy…