12 principles of the Agile Business Manifesto

Legacy organisations (we like to call them Performance Engines at LHBS) are struggling to adjust to a business environment that is more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. Smaller and more nimble organisations seem to have significant advantages in this new business environment.

While senior members of the Performance Engine understand that they need to change, they are often missing a handy guideline of principles to become more agile, nimble and responsive.

The 12 principles of the Agile Business Manifesto translate the original principles of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development into a business context and provide a comprehensive set of guiding principles for senior managers at Performance Engines that want to transform their organisation:

12 principles of the Agile Business Manifesto

1. The primary orientation is towards customer need delivered through constant improvement of customer experience
2. Strategies and tactics are highly adaptive and responsive, and change is welcomed
3. Iterative, sprint working delivers customer values through continuous progress and momentum
4. Effectiveness cross-functional collaboration supported through clear intent, is critical for success
5. Build companies with motivated individuals. Empower teams to deliver through a flexible working environment characterised by trust and comfort with dissent
6. Bureaucracy and politics are minimised, co-location and face-to-face communication maximised, wherever possible
7. Working outputs are the optimum measure of progress and success
8. Agile business supports relentless and sustainable innovation and progress. Change and iteration is constant, and the pace of progress never slows
9. Technical excellence and good design are central to maintaining pace and agility
10. Minimise wasted effort, duplication and resources
11. The best results emerge from small teams with a high degree of autonomy
12. Continuous improvement is achieved through embedded reflection time, and behaviours and culture that support learning

You can find out more about the Agile Business Manifesto here:

Neil Perkin (co-author of the upcoming book Agile Business Manifesto) also talked about Agile Planning at one of our LHBS Uncomfortable Talks: