In the past 20 years, the agile approach to improving products, services, and processes has swept the business world. It calls for organizations to adopt small, empowered, cross-functional teams, break initiatives or challenges into small modules, and develop solutions using rapid prototyping, tight customer-feedback loops, and quick adaptation. Rooted in software development, agile has spread to many other functions, and some companies have turned much of their organization, including the C-suite, into agile teams.
A version of this article appeared in the November–December 2021 issue of Harvard Business Review.
