Scan the annual reports of well-known public companies today and “lack of agility” will be listed high among the risk factors many are facing. Such indeterminate exposure is unsettling for investors. When a company lacks the ability to quickly adapt to changes in the marketplace, its future earnings are uncertain.

But how to shift from a “business as usual” mindset to one of agility? A productive starting point is to identify where within an organization agility is already being practiced– and showing tangible results. For a growing number of organizations, such success can be clearly quantified within software development teams practicing Scrum. Their iterative and transparent work style is consistently delivering higher quality software on more disciplined release schedules to greater customer satisfaction. But agility cannot continue to thrive in a vacuum. Its widespread adoption needs to be fostered by the organization as a whole.

Effectively scaling agility requires that the effort and productivity come from the bottom up and its strategy and championing come from the top down. Agility PathTM does both. Agility PathTM is a framework developed by Scrum.org to help managers align a company’s key domains (product development, sales, marketing, finance, customer support, et al) into teams that work nimbly with one another. Collectively, these teams create an agile organization. Their common goal is incremental, quantifiable, and continually improved upon benchmarks of success. These incremental successes yield increased competitiveness and greater ROI over time. “Lack of Agility” is dropped as a risk factor on the annual report, and investors regain confidence.