Agile Organization Glossary

Accountability is the ability to take responsibility for a specific task.

Agile started as a project-oriented software development methodology.

Antifragile is an organism, a person, an idea, or a system that gets better and better when perturbed.

An autopoietic system is created by itself: it is in perpetual renewal, and this regeneration is autonomous.

Beyond Budgeting postulates that forecasting is inherently flawed because every fixed projection system makes forecasts instantaneously obsolete.

Change management refers to everything that's put in place to help an organization make a big change.

The role of a Circle Lead is to enable its Circle to work towards its purpose.

The role of a Circle Rep is to carry the voice of its Circle into the parent Circle.

Choosing by consensus means that you can move forward when everyone supports the proposal.

Choosing by consent means that you can move forward when no one objects to the proposal.

Cybernetics is the study of interactions that take place within a system and the catalysts for those actions.

Design thinking is a creative strategy used to solve problems. The process begins with empathy of the end user followed by ideation, prototyping, and testing of the prototype.

Authority is distributed when more than one or just a few people can make decisions.

Employee engagement is a measure of how motivated employees are to help their team and organization be successful. Low employee engagement tends to result in poor performance.

When you empower someone, you give them the authority to make a decision and do something.

A facilitator is someone who ensures that meetings are inclusive and productive.

Feedback is an essential component of growth and development. It allows employees to improve their performance which in turn makes the individual and organization more successful.

A flat organization is an organization that has few or no levels of middle management.

Governance is the set of processes used by people in power to govern a group of people.

A meeting to discuss decisions that will impact the roles or policies of an organization.

Getting Things Done (GTD) is a productivity management system that aims to organize the chaos that surrounds us.

Holacracy is a collaborative governance model alternative to the traditional top-down pyramid.

A decision-making process where not everyone needs to agree but no one must have an objection.

Key Performance Indicators are measurable values we fix to evaluate the success of a project or an objective.

Lean management is a production methodology that focuses on optimizing the production process by minimizing waste.

Lean startup is a market research method that focuses on testing, measuring and iterating based on the feedback received.

LeSS is a project management framework for software development. It complements the SCRUM methodology by helping to coordinate several Scrum teams working on a single product.

Management is the process of coordinating people, tasks, and information across levels and departments to accomplish specific goals that are important to the organization.

Management 3.0 emphasizes the idea of collaboration between employees as well as between managers and executives through dialogue and sharing.

New work reallocates the available time of each individual in three thirds: work as traditionally designed, intelligent consumption or autarkic production, and personal fulfilment.

OKRs is a goal-setting method that aligns individual, team and organizational purpose.

In a psychologically safe environment, people feel safe enough to be themselves.

A purpose is an inspiring reason that explains why we do what we do and how we do it.

The Quakers' method of governance is based on a common purpose, consensus and an absence of hierarchy. It has greatly enriched modern concepts of collaborative organization.

SAFe is a project management framework for software development. Its promise is to speed up decision-making while reducing risks inherent to major software developments.

The Scrum method is an empirical, dynamic and participatory approach to project management.

In a holacratic or sociocratic organization, each Circle elects a Secretary. The Secretary takes notes and publishes the minutes.

Self-actualization is the idea that humans are driven, at their core, by a desire to live out their lives to the fullest.

Self-managed teams and individuals get the work done without authoritarian supervision.

Self-organization is the idea that systems can emerge and evolve exclusively through internal dynamics, without the explicit intervention of an external agent.

The social organic approach to organizational structure focuses on the impact of an organization on the common well-being of society.

Sociocracy is a collaborative governance model alternative to the traditional top-down pyramid.

Spiral dynamics is a psychological model that explains the behaviour of individuals in organizations.

The systemic approach in management studies the organization as the sum of the interactions that take place within it.

Systems theory focuses on understanding how every part of a system work together to form a complex whole.

A tactical meeting follows a very specific structure to move operational projects forward.

Taylorism methodically reorganizes work by breaking down and optimizing the distribution of tasks between people.

Teal organizations are built on 3 pillars: trust others, be yourself fully, evolve.

Successful companies practice five disciplines: personal mastery, mental models, a shared vision, team learning and systems thinking.

Transformation is the process of changing an organization's culture with a goal in mind.

A system can be considered viable when it manages to survive on its own in a changing environment, thanks to its ability to adapt.

Describes the uncertain and unpredictable business world in which companies are now evolving

An organization that encourages wholeness is one where people can be fully themselves.