Differentiating Agility

Differentiating Agility

Before taking steps to incorporate agility in the business networks, there is a need to thoroughly understand the implications and effort involved. Implementing agility in a business network needs a lot of effort and time. The process of estimating and analysis in a business network after adopting strategies for agility is very complex and different from other e-commerce estimation and assessment techniques.

The costing and performance estimation in agility are different from the normal static e-commerce costing and ERP strategies. Flexibility is key factor which is applied to each and every assessment techniques applied for performance assessment in agile business networks. A new approach is required for formulating the process flow and how supply chains are maintained in an agile environment.

There is also requirement to adopt parallel lines simultaneously and estimate the progress of each line accurately to determine the performance metrics. These performance metrics can give the ability to predict the future course of action and expected results in following a particular process model. If problems are detected during the progress of a particular process work flow, alternative or the parallel line can continue to earn the revenue and compensate for the losses incurred in the failed process lines. This ensures good success rates and also reduces the risk of failure in long term projects in general.

Therefore a correct understanding of agility is mandatory for defining strategies based on agility in the collaborative business networks. The correct understanding of agility will also aid in formulating the optimum strategies for achieving good success estimates on long term project.

Tools for agile business networks

Agility is very complex factor in a business network. Since the agile strategies are very difficult to formulate and also to assess, specialized software tools and methods have been devised to help the agile business networks to take advantage of the agility principle. These tools help in clearly defining the Infrastructure Elements and their impact on the agile business networks. The study on these infrastructure elements leads to creating the Infrastructure Observations and highlighting the key result areas and critical processes that need to be guarded.

The tools also formulate a set of Best Agile Practice methodologies for the practitioners to follow. The best agile practices are dependent heavily on the network hierarchy and hence there is a need to adopt these best practices on case to case to basis instead of blindly following them. The next important aspect in an agile business network is the heavy reliance on the Information Theory aspects.

Secure and accurate communication and information flow mechanisms need to be adopted for successful implementation of agility in business networks. This requires a thorough study of the existing information flow process in the business network. The results of the study can be analyzed using the mathematical tools for determining the changes required to adopt the existing information infrastructure to agile business network environment. There are several tools and software which are aimed at measuring and assessing performance through Metrics.