Business agility is hindered by operational silos, breaking these optimizes the flow of value.
The Problem: An organisation works in silos. The new WoW is to agilize teams. Teams practice agility yet work in silos. The problem remains, now we have “agile silos”.
The Solution: The Organisation breaks silos by connecting teams. Teams are connected through a common value stream and organize their workflow to serve the value stream. They work from a single common value backlog and cross functionality emerges. Then, the team workflow performance is improved through feedback loops.
Some take aways: Business agility concerns the entire value stream. The value stream encourages accountability . Workflow is governed by work intake policies. Feedback loops attend to needs and foster improvement
This framework addresses a fundamental organizational challenge: the transition from traditional siloed operations to true business agility. The core insight is that simply implementing agile methodologies within existing departmental boundaries creates “agile silos” – teams that may be internally agile but still operate in isolation from one another.
The root issue lies in how organizations typically structure themselves around functional departments (IT, marketing, sales, operations) rather than around the flow of customer value. When agile practices are introduced without addressing these structural barriers, teams become more efficient at their individual tasks but continue to hand work off to other teams in a disjointed manner. This creates bottlenecks, delays, and misalignment despite local improvements.
The proposed solution centers on value stream thinking – organizing work around the end-to-end process that delivers value to customers. By connecting teams through shared value streams, organizations create natural collaboration points and shared accountability. The single common backlog ensures priorities are aligned across teams, while cross-functionality emerges organically as teams adapt to serve the value stream’s needs rather than just their departmental objectives.
Feedback loops become critical in this model because they provide the mechanism for continuous improvement and responsiveness to changing needs. Work intake policies govern how work enters the system, preventing overload and maintaining flow efficiency.
Summary
Organizations often create “agile silos” by implementing agile practices within existing departmental boundaries. True business agility requires breaking down these silos by organizing teams around shared value streams rather than functional departments. This approach involves connecting teams through common backlogs, enabling cross-functional collaboration, and using feedback loops to optimize workflow performance. The key shift is from departmental efficiency to value stream optimization, creating accountability for end-to-end customer value delivery rather than isolated team outputs.
Agile Ways 