A Formula to Measure Business Agility

Recently, Michael Hugos wrote a good article, published in BPMInstitute.org, called A Formula to Measure Business Agility.

He started the article with the definition of agility in business as: the ability to consistently earn profits that are 2 – 4% (and sometimes more) higher than the market average.

He develops the idea about agility in business and he thinks there’s a formula to measure agility and it goes like this:

Business Agility = (Visibility + Motivation) x Training

According him, this formula identifies the main factors that promote agility and it shows how they interact with each other to produce different levels of agility.

He defines how can be measure the factors of formula:
- Visibility can be measured by the technology and procedures a company uses to collect, store, disseminate and display information.
- Motivation can be measured by the incentives and authority people are given to make decisions and act to achieve company objectives.
- Training builds peoples’ skills for using visibility, for making good decisions, and acting effectively to achieve objectives.

This article is excerpted from his newest book, available this fall, titled Sustainable Prosperity: Using Agility to Move Beyond the Boom-to-Bust Cycle and also according the Editor's Note: this article will be available until 9/17/2008 and will appear in Michael Hugos' upcoming book.

This is an interesting point of view about how define and measure business agility.

Michael Hugos also wrote several books. These are two interesting books, focused on management:

- Building the Real-Time Enterprise: An Executive Briefing



- CIO Best Practices: Enabling Strategic Value with Information Technology - Michael Hugos, Joe Stenzel, Gary Cokins, Bill Flemming, Anthony Hill, Paul R. Niven , Karl D. Schubert, Alan Stratton