Define the capabilities underlying agility

Every enterprise must have clarity and alignment on what agility means in its specific context and circumstances. The way to give meaning to agility is by identifying the capabilities that are needed to enable the business to be on the journey to fulfilling its purpose, and also defining how each of these identified capabilities helps toward fulfilling the purpose.

As discussed in Chapter 2, From Agile to Agility, agility is a set of underlying capabilities. The chapter covered the six underlying capabilities based on the framework created by David S. Alberts, namely, responsiveness, versatility, flexibility, resilience, innovativeness, and adaptability. However, the critical point about capabilities defining agility is that they need not be limited to these six, and enterprises can identify additional capabilities that are appropriate for their context, for example, stability is a capability that some enterprises may wish to have.

While agility is...