Agile Principles and Practices in the Italian Architectural and Engineering Sector. The Case of ArchLivIng.

Abstract

The terms “agile” or “agility” have become ubiquitous across today’s organizations. While practitioners and consultants may find some common ground about what “agile” means and entails, researchers have been unclear and mostly inconsistent when describing the term. It is fair to assume that part of the reason why academia lacks consistent conceptualization of the term is the underlying rapid transformations that the concept has been going through in practice. A deeper investigation of existing research will indeed reveal different streams of the literature elaborating on agility for different purposes and reaching different conclusions. This work will try to shed some light on what agile means today, what an agile organization is, and what principles and practices it adheres to. This investigation is performed by providing an overview of how a specific sector – architecture and engineering (A&E) – in Italy can or should approach the concept. Moreover, a case study of a firm in the sector is presented to further show how agility plays out in reality. This company – a small-sized A&E Italian firm – typifies the complicated journey of a business endeavor growing in size and structure which, in the process, decided to adopt agile principles and practices to avoid becoming too bureaucratic and, instead, keep its nimbleness and dexterity. As a result, this work intends to provide a meaningful contribution to the literature in the flourishing field of organizational agility.