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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"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.
"I've been looking for a book to recommend to the company managers I work with, and EDGE is exactly the book I had in mind. Thank you."
-Donna Fitzgerald, Executive Director, NimblePM, Inc., and former Research VP at Gartner
" EDGE is an outstanding read for business and technology leaders in search of higher performance, better cultures and a solid set of strategies to ensure your organization succeeds.
"Packed full of clear and concise models and methods to help focus your innovation activities on outcomes and options to get there, EDGE: Value-Driven Digital Transformation is the go-to guide for leaders looking to link strategy to how an organization executes on delivery of value, delighting customers, and business results."
-Barry O'Reilly, business advisor and author of Unlearn and Lean Enterprise
"Agile as a broad business concept has now, finally, gone mainstream. Jim Highsmith was there at the beginning, in the 1990s-one of very few players who created the powerful ideas behind agile. In this new book, these powerful ideas, significantly evolved, are unleashed on the challenge of digital transformation. It's a good fit, and yields potent insights."
-Robert D. Austin, Professor, Ivey Business School, and Author of Adventures of an IT Leader
"With our clients, and with our internal initiatives, we need to figure out how to let teams be autonomous, yet focus on common goals. The EDGE framework, and this book that describes it, distills our current best understanding of how to balance that difficult puzzle."
-Martin Fowler, Chief Scientist, ThoughtWorks
"Connecting strategy to implementation and modifying an organization's planning process to take advantage of the flexibility software provides is a huge challenge. EDGE provides a framework for addressing that problem. This book is a must-read for anyone working to transform their company to be able to compete in a digital world."
-Gary Gruver, President of Gruver Consulting, previously R&D director Hewlett-Packard, and VP of QA, Release, and Operations at Macy's.com
