Are you ready for agile?

‘Agility’ appears on many organizational goals and agendas. Given the experience of the pandemic, that is scarcely surprising. The need for speed and adaptability has taken on a new level of urgency, whether reacting to risks and threats, or grasping new opportunities.

Being agile is especially challenging for commercial and contracts teams. We are not the sort of people who operate in a vacuum. Most of our actions and decisions involve others, both inside and outside the walls of our organization. Therefore our ability to operate flexibly and at speed is typically constrained by their responsiveness.

Join the agile survey now!

For CCM groups, ‘agile’ has two distinct meanings. It may relate to our internal operations and processes, but it may equally refer to agile contracts. The recent World Commerce & Contracting benchmark study tells us that agile contracts are on the rise – a growing number of organizations are observing increased demand and use. Given the uncertainties that surround us, that is not surprising – though the study continues to show substantial variations between industries.

We also know that many remain confused about agile contracting – when and how to use it, how to reconcile it with traditional financial and budgeting systems, what form the contract should take – indeed, should there even be a formal contract at all?

Questions like this have been at the heart of a month’s-long collaborative activity that has pulled together a set of principles, collectively known as the ‘Agile Contract Manifesto’. Designed to accompany the long established ‘Agile Manifesto’, this set of twelve rules or principles provide a framework to guide contract developers and negotiators. Over the coming weeks, we will be socializing and testing the Manifesto with the commercial and contracts community – webinars, roundtables and at the WorldCC conferences, as well as third party events.

For now, we are collecting input on both forms of agile through a survey that tests both organizational agility and also seeks reaction to the Manifesto Principles. I hope you will share your view and help us all on the path to increased agility!