EDGE: The Agile Operating Model That Will Help You Successfully Execute Your Digital Transformation
"[The authors'] passion for technology allows them to recognize that for most enterprises in the 21st century, technology is THE business. This is what really separates the EDGE approach. It is a comprehensive operating model with technology at its core."
-From the Foreword by Heidi Musser, Executive Vice President and Principal Consultant, Leading Agile; retired, Vice President and CIO, USAA
Maximum innovation happens at the edge of chaos: the messy, risky, and uncertain threshold between randomness and structure. Operating there is uncomfortable but it's where organizations "invent the future." EDGE is a set of fast, iterative, adaptive, lightweight, and value-driven tools to achieve digital transformation, and
EDGE: Value-Driven Digital Transformation is your guide to using this operating model for innovation.
Jim Highsmith is one of the world's leading agile pioneers and a coauthor of the Agile Manifesto. He, Linda Luu, and David Robinson know from their vast in-the-trenches experience that sustainable digital transformation requires far more than adopting isolated agile practices or conventional portfolio management. This hard, indispensable work involves changing culture and mindset, and going beyond transforming the IT department.
EDGE embraces an adaptive mindset in the face of market uncertainty, a visible, value-centered portfolio approach that encourages continual value linkages from vision to detailed initiatives, incremental funding that shifts as strategies evolve, collaborative decision-making, and better risk mitigation. This guide shows leaders how to use the breakthrough EDGE approach to go beyond incremental improvement in a world of exponential opportunities.
- Build an organization that adapts fast enough to thrive
- Clear away unnecessary governance processes, obsolete "command and control" leadership approaches, and slow budgeting/planning cycles
- Improve collaboration when major, fast-paced responses are necessary
- Continually optimize investment allocation and monitoring based on your vision and goals
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About the Authors
Jim Highsmith, Executive Consultant at ThoughtWorks, Inc, has 50-plus years' experience as a manager, consultant, developer, and storyteller. A leader in the agile community for more than 20 years, he coauthored the Agile Manifesto, cofounded The Agile Alliance, and authored the world-renowned books Adaptive Leadership and Agile Project Management (both from Addison-Wesley).
Linda Luu is a principal product and portfolio consultant at ThoughtWorks, Inc., with over 15 years' experience in product innovation, customer centered design, and organizational transformation. Experienced in Lean, Agile, and Design Thinking practices, Linda has worked with a number of clients worldwide to build digital organizations that can sense and respond to changing customer and business needs. Linda holds a double degree in commerce (finance) and science (applied maths), and an MBA from the Australian Graduate School of Management.
David Robinson is a principal consultant at ThoughtWorks, Inc., with over 30 years experience in information technology management, organizational transformation, and technology consulting. David's career has spanned consulting with large organizations, upper management roles in enterprise IT shops, and running an organization development team.
Industry Reviews
"This impressive book offers a holistic set of principles and practices that will help enterprises to upgrade their innovative capabilities. With a laser focus on outcomes and value, and relying on a product mindset, lightweight governance, and adaptive leadership, the authors explain how a company can survive and thrive with an agile product portfolio in an increasingly complex environment. This book should be cherished and devoured."
- Jurgen Appelo, author of Management 3.0 and Managing for Happiness
"As an entrepreneur who since 2008 has been growing a bootstrapped SaaS company that transforms industrial manufacturers into digital commerce powerhouses, I am living on the edge.
"But thanks to EDGE: Value-Driven Digital Transformation, I now have a framework and vocabulary that I can use to reflect on my journey and visualize my organizational future. More importantly, knowing that the authors' decades of experience and wisdom, encapsulated in EDGE, resonates with mine, I can confidently make this required reading by everyone at Corevist and recommend it to all of our clients who are struggling with their own digital transformations."
- Sam Bayer, CEO, Corevist
"It's refreshing to read a book that goes beyond the 'base camp' of agility. So often we get to Scrum or some framework and then stop. True digital transformation is much more, and this book by Highsmith, Luu, and Robinson captures what every manager needs to know if we want to scale these challenging heights. Highly recommended!"
-Martyn Jones, Managing Director, SoftEd Group, New Zealand
" EDGE: Value-Driven Digital Transformation is a valuable book and an indispensable guide to successfully navigating a digital transformation. It's packed with powerfully simple and practical guidance, asking us the questions we need to address. I've found the practical operating-model framework focuses our attention on what really matters (i.e., adopting rapidly enough, developing differentiating capabilities to address emerging opportunities, and creating a sustainable advantage). Equally important are insights of traps that most organizations fall into-and straightforward suggestions of how to prepare.
"Other highlights of value are recognizing paradoxes and practical tips on how to manage conflicting polarities with 'both/and' thinking; how to more effectively and rapidly make decisions informed by empirical data and grounded by well-designed value models; and aligning adaptive strategy to execution.
"Lastly, EDGE stresses investing in frequent, effective feedback loops that ensure today's competitive differentiators don't become tomorrow's competitive anchors.
"I believe EDGE offers us an indispensable toolkit to navigate life on the 'edge' of uncertainty-and also to create our own, uniquely competitive capability to seize opportunities that are hidden in the emerging chaos: investing for change, working together, and adapting quickly and continuously.
"A 'must' read."
-Pat Reed, former executive roles at Disney, Universal Studios, Gap Inc.; academic roles at University of Denver, UC Berkeley, and Woodbury University; entrepreneur and cofounder of iHoriz, Inc.
"With the publication of EDGE: Value-Driven Digital Transformation, Jim Highsmith, Linda Luu, and David Robinson have written the book that is precisely what we need to help organizations be successful in the emerging world of the digital future. Agility and adaptiveness are qualities that should be part of all areas of business, but organizations are struggling with the details of how to make the transition. If they invest in the right digital technology, will all their problems be solved, or are there deeper and more pervasive changes that should be made to all of the management systems?
" EDGE answers the technology question brilliantly through the concept of tech at the core. It was so well articulated that I sat there slapping my forehead because even ten years at Gartner hadn't made this concept as clear to me as this chapter did. I understood it intuitively before, but I didn't have the right words to explain it, and now I do. This chapter alone would make the whole book worth reading.
"On the management side of the equation, I appreciated the concept of the Lean Value Tree. Organizations struggle with how to clearly define the value of any business decision, especially ones that do NOT lend themselves to a hard ROI. The Lean Value Tree provides a simple and direct approach to determining value, which in turn will help organizations make better investment decisions much more quickly.
