Development Of An Agile Business Strategy In An Uncertain Market Environment

Master's Thesis from the year 2014 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1, Donau-Universität Krems (Faculty of Business and Globalization; Department for Management and Economics), course: Danube Professional MBA; Area of Concentration: Strategic Management & Organizational Change, language: English, abstract: Strategic decision-making is a key task for every senior manager of any sized company. Strategic decisions are characterized by highly uncertain conditions. Managing this uncertainty and anticipating the future, is seen as key to success and the measure for being a successful manager. In the opposite direction, if firms fail to anticipate how the future will be, it is then often called “bad luck”. However, if “failing to anticipate the future” were correlated with bad luck, this would mean that “anticipating the future right” should be directly linked with good luck. However, good luck is often ignored and seen as excellent management performance instead. To reduce the influence of luck, this master thesis deals with the different approaches on strategy-formation and decision-making, to identify to what extent they differ in their methodology on how they manage the uncertainty and how they try to get control over the future. The aim is to identify best practice approaches that should lead to better performance on reduced risk and cost.

In a very real sense, Michael Lodato has been working on this handbook for over 45 years - starting in 1968 when, as a new CEO of a small consulting company, he attended a seminar on strategic planning at UCLA. The resulting strategy helped run the company but also served as the first template for his strategic planning methodology. Over the years, as a result of working on real issues, faced by him as an executive and client corporations, the template expanded to add tactical planning and features to handle changes in the business environments that may be coming or have already occurred, to quickly assess the impact of such changes on success, and to adapt to the new realities by making changes to its strategies, tactics and processes in time avoid bad results In short, he added agility to the template that is the substance of this handbook. This is not a text book or a book on strategic management theory. It is a step-by-step, here's-how-to-do-it guide to achieving agile strategic management. All of this growth in the strategic management processes came, not as an academic activity. It is written for people who do, or aspire to do the work of strategic management. As you learn about the processes and read stories about how they have applied to a wide range of situations, think through how you might apply them to the situations, issues and opportunities you face. They are intended to help you unleash the talent that resides in your team and organization. The resulting methodology includes processes that guide all the work of strategic management at all levels: from strategic, through tactical, and down to individual action items in such a way that there is a strong interdependence among them.

This book presents the outcomes of the 20th IEEE/ACIS International Conference on Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking and Parallel/Distributed Computing (SNPD 2019), which was held on July 8–10, 2019, in Toyama, Japan. The aim of the conference was to bring together researchers and scientists, businesspeople and entrepreneurs, teachers, engineers, computer users, and students to discuss the various fields of computer science and to share their experiences and exchange new ideas and information in a meaningful way. Further, they presented research results on all aspects (theory, applications and tools) of computer and information science, and discussed the practical challenges encountered in their work and the solutions they adopted to overcome them. The book highlights the best papers from those accepted for presentation at the conference. They were chosen based on review scores submitted by members of the program committee and underwent further rigorous rounds of review. From this second round, 15 of the conference’s most promising papers were selected for this Springer (SCI) book and not the conference proceedings. We eagerly await the important contributions that we know these authors will make to the field of computer and information science.

Streamline project workflow with expert agile implementation The Project Management Profession is beginning to go throughrapid and profound transformation due to the widespread adoption ofagile methodologies. Those changes are likely to dramaticallychange the role of project managers in many environments as we haveknown them and raise the bar for the entire project managementprofession; however, we are in the early stages of thattransformation and there is a lot of confusion about the impact ithas on project managers: There are many stereotypes and misconceptions that exist aboutboth Agile and traditional plan-driven project management, Agile and traditional project management principles andpractices are treated as separate and independent domains ofknowledge with little or no integration between the two andsometimes seen as in conflict with each other Agile and "Waterfall" are thought of as two binary,mutually-exclusive choices and companies sometimes try to force-fittheir business and projects to one of those extremes when the rightsolution is to fit the approach to the project It’s no wonder that many Project Managers might beconfused by all of this! This book will help project managersunravel a lot of the confusion that exists; develop a totally newperspective to see Agile and traditional plan-driven projectmanagement principles and practices in a new light as complementaryto each other rather than competitive; and learn to develop anadaptive approach to blend those principles and practices togetherin the right proportions to fit any situation. There are many books on Agile and many books on traditionalproject management but what’s very unique about this book isthat it takes an objective approach to help you understand thestrengths and weaknesses of both of those areas to see how they canwork synergistically to improve project outcomes in anyproject. The book includes discussion topics, real world casestudies, and sample enterprise-level agile frameworks thatfacilitate hands-on learning as well as an in-depth discussion ofthe principles behind both Agile and traditional plan-drivenproject management practices to provide a more thorough level ofunderstanding.

Many businesses around the world are suffering a crisis, and while experts agree, the economy will indeed rebound, managers are looking for tactics and strategies to help see them through these bad times and help them build momentum and position their companies for success when the economy does turn around. Agile Business for Fragile Times was conceived to help executives manage through a downturn, and, more importantly, prepare for the rebound. The book guides readers through the key strategic, financial, and operational steps they should take to ensure stability and growth. The first section of the book covers strategies to protect performance: - prioritizing customers, projects, and employees; - digitizing for more powerful and effective links to your customers, and - optimizing business opportunities and take a reality check on their current business model. Once your strategy is in place, the rest comes down to execution. Execution is the main skill required in a recession. Execution in a boom is very difficult: skilled staffs are hard to get, but in a recession, these resources become easier to claim. Now is the time for companies to seize and deploy talent in retaining ke

As contrary as it sounds, "planning" -- as we traditionally understand the term--can be the worst thing a company can do. Consider that volatile weather events disrupt trusted supply chains, markets, and promised delivery schedules. Ever-shifting geo-political tensions, as well as internal political upheaval within U.S. and global governments, derail long-planned new ventures. Technology failures block opportunities. Competitors suddenly change their product or release date; your team cannot meet the pace of innovations in your market niche, leaving you sidelined. There are myriad ways in the current business environment for a company's well-considered business plans to go awry. Most business schools continue to prepare managers to be effective in stable and predictable environments, conditions that, if they ever existed at all, are long gone. The Agility Shift shows business leaders exactly how to make the radical mindset and strategy shift necessary to create an agile, entrepreneurial organization that can innovate and thrive in complex, ever-changing contexts. As author Pamela Meyer explains, there is much more involved than a reconfiguration of the org chart and job descriptions. It requires relinquishing the illusion of control at the very foundation of most management training and business practice. Despite most leaders' approaches, "Agility is not simply accelerated planning." Unlike many agility books on the market, The Agility Shift provides specific, actionable strategies and tactics for leaders at all levels of the organization to put into practice immediately to improve agility and achieve results.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Lean and Agile Software Development, LASD 2021, which was held online on January 23, 2021. The conference received a total of 32 submissions, of which 10 full and 2 short papers are included in this volume. In addition, one keynote paper is also included. To live the agile mindset, the LASD conference focuses on highly relevant research outcomes and fosters their way into practice. Topics discussed in this volume range from teams under COVID-19 through women in Agile, to product road-mapping and non-functional requirements.

In the ten years since this Gower Handbook was first published, Programme Management has been transformed to become the vehicle of choice for realising the objectives of large scale, complicated, business, government and social investment. The Second Edition of this Gower Handbook is a completely new text; designed as a definitive guide to the current state of Programme Management. To that end the text offers foundation theory and knowledge around key issues such as, managing programme contracts, people and know-how, complexity and uncertainty, benefits and success measures, as well as every stage of the programme life cycle. The main central section of the book provides theory, tools, advice and examples of practical application from an industry context and covers sectors including construction, energy, aerospace and defence, IT, automotive and the public sector. The Handbook also includes a section with chapters on assessing and improving programme competences and developing maturity. Discrete chapters relate programme management to the international baselines and standards. Collectively, the Gower Handbook of Programme Management is most comprehensive guide to the subject that you can buy.