Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/1408661
4 Data and agility Value is created not just by the data per se but also by the tools and processes we have in place to analyze it and produce those business outcomes. In today's digital world, fraught with rapid change, uncertainty, and complexity—disruption, you might say—we need to use data to support business agility and to respond quickly and flexibly to changing circumstances. Agility is what enables organizations to turn rapid change into opportunity and to avoid disruption by responding nimbly to competitive threats. Enterprises in the digital age have learned that they need to get early versions of products to market quickly and evolve them through continuous feedback from the market. 4 The last few years have brought techniques for building agility into the product development process, including, for example, Agile software development, DevOps, and Lean software development. The cloud has been used to speed up the delivery of IT capabilities, for both software and hardware. Team-based organizational structures have made it possible to mobilize the resources to meet changing needs. All of these developments have helped enterprises make their processes more agile. But agile processes are only one part of the story: The company's data itself must also be agile. It must be easily available for uses that are unexpected and constantly changing. It must be accessible and meaningful. Employees must have tools easily available to work with the data and the skills to do so. It is this ability to use data flexibly—to make it available for new uses that we don't know about in advance—that is the missing link in achieving enterprise agility and distinguishes the agile organization from one that has merely adopted the frameworks and trappings of agile models. Business agility requires data agility. A data-driven enterprise is a master of both. 4 Ries, Eric, The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses (New York: Crown Business, 2011).