This Is Beyond Budgeting

Chapter 6Agile Transformation

Many large organizations are today on an agile transformation journey in some form or shape. Although there are many similarities between the Beyond Budgeting principles and the Agile Manifesto, there are also some important differences. Due to its birthplace in software development and its focus on how teams work, a range of corporate management issues were left out of scope for early agile, for instance, budgeting. Beyond Budgeting, on the contrary, was born as a challenge to traditional corporate management, and therefore it addresses the many issues early agile didn't need to.

Transformation is, by the way, a word I struggle with, even if I have used it several times. It indicates a project with an end date. An agile transformation, or a Beyond Budgeting implementation, is not a project. It is a journey where the direction is clearer than the destination, if there is one.

In this chapter, we will also discuss OKRs and psychological safety, concepts that also fit well with Beyond Budgeting and that especially the agile community has embraced.

The Elephant in the Room

When agile was born, it was not about big organizations asking big questions about reinventing themselves as the start‐ups many of them used to be. Although agile was rebelling against many aspects of traditional management, the focus was on how it negatively affected software development and how teams worked, not on how entire organizations should operate in agile ways.

Agile ...