Significance

In the period until the dawn of the Information Age, which was dominated by manufacturing, the focus of enterprise-level governance was more on managing constraints and optimizing efficiencies, rather than about maximizing effectiveness and creating value. In times of fast-paced change, where a company's survival hinges on satisfying customers through innovative offerings, continuing with the traditional governance approach is guaranteed to impede agility. Governance must enable the building and sustaining of the underlying capabilities of agility.

While governance is built into team-level Agile practices, such as daily stand-up meetings and sprint reviews, enterprise-level governance is a different "ball game" altogether. While team-level governance is based on the primary principles of visibility, transparency, and fast feedback, company-level governance not only encompasses these principles but is also about balancing the paradoxes such as order and freedom, short-term and...