The Future of Agility - An in-depth review

Organizations worldwide are facing a pivotal moment in how they pursue “agility.”

After years of widespread Agile transformation initiatives, there are signs of fatigue and decline in traditional agile change programs. Economic uncertainty and global disruptions have made many leaders hesitant to launch new change initiatives, seeing them as “one step too much” amid more pressing challenges.

Research indicates that the more turmoil in the macro environment – from financial instability and pandemics to geopolitical conflicts – the less appetite executives have for additional internal change programs.

At the same time, agility remains as critical as ever.

As Simon Powers notes in The Future of Agilityreport, “Agile with a capital A has become its own industry... This industry is ending, but the demand for change is not”.

In other words, while the era of big “Agile” programs may be waning, the need for true organizational agility is only growing in today’s complex environment.

Purpose of the Future of Agility Report: In February 2025, Simon Powers – founder of the Deeper Change Academy – released The Future of Agility report to investigate why agile change efforts have stalled and what’s next for organizations striving to adapt. Drawing on data from 311 survey responses, 15 case studies, and multiple interviews with senior leaders, the report examines systemic issues behind shallow or failed Agile transformations. It highlights how macroeconomic pressures, leadership patterns, and organizational structures are impacting agility.

The goal is to illuminate how companies can evolve beyond “Agile” as a buzzword and build the deeper agility needed to thrive. This article introduces the report’s key findings – from leadership engagement to team design – and points to solutions, including an upcoming video presentation and a targeted training course for change-makers. (The full Future of Agility report is available for download on the Deeper

Change Academy website – we encourage readers to get the report here.)

Decline of Agile Change Programs: Over the past 18 months, many Agile coaches, Scrum Masters, and transformation leads have seen a downturn in demand. This trend aligns closely with a “perfect storm” of global events. Senior executives have been grappling with economic turmoil (e.g. post-2020 market instability, cost-cutting) and successive crises like the pandemic, geopolitical conflicts, and technological disruption.

Research cited in the report shows that the average large organization now undergoes nine significant changes per year, up from just two before 2020. This unprecedented pace has led to leadership change fatigue, with a startling 38% of surveyed leaders saying they would prefer to resign than lead another major change initiative.

In such an environment, it’s no surprise that many companies have paused or scaled back dedicated “Agile transformation” programs. Leaders simply feel too overwhelmed by external volatility to take on additional internal change.

Yet, agility itself is still very much needed – and still happening, albeit under new guises. In fact, about 70% of organizations continue to invest in agile practices and ways of working, even if they avoid labelling it as an “Agile transformation”.

Many have started rebranding or restructuring their change initiatives, integrating agile principles into broader improvement programs without using the buzzword. As Simon Powers observed, organizations are “still embracing agility and moving forward with change, but the names they’re using are changing”.

The nature of agility is evolving beyond the strict confines of the Agile frameworks of the 2010s. Instead of treating Agile as a one-time rollout of a methodology, leading companies are looking at agility as a continuous capability – essentially, being agile rather than merely doingAgile. The Future of Agility report places this shift in context, arguing that while the “Agile Industrial Complex” (the big consulting and certification ecosystem around Agile) is reaching its limits, the real work of building adaptable, resilient organizations has only just begun.

One of the most striking findings of the report is the critical impact of leadership engagement on the success of change programs. In too many organizations, senior leaders sponsored an Agile transformation initiative but then remained hands-off – or lost interest once the initial rollout was done. The result was “agility” in name only, lacking the deep support needed to change culture and strategy. Survey data reveals that about 65% of organizations have leaders who are either not engaged, don’t understand the change, or aren’t even aware of the details of the change program.

In other words, a majority of agile initiatives suffer from a disengaged leadership team.

When leaders treat an Agile transformation as a project they can delegate and forget, agility never gets baked into the company’s DNA. It stays superficial (focused on team-level rituals or tools) instead of transformative.

The report identifies leadership disengagement as perhaps the primary reason agility has not progressed beyond shallow improvements in many firms.

Without active, informed executive involvement, agile practices remain isolated in pockets and major organizational impediments go unaddressed. Tellingly, only an estimated 5–10% of leaders show the kind of engaged, transformative leadership needed to truly lead with agility. This small fraction corresponds roughly to the proportion of leaders who have reached a higher “action logic” or developmental stage (sometimes called transformational leadership) that enables them to embrace new mindsets.

Most leaders, however, have not made that leap. They sponsor change in title but not in spirit, resulting in what we might call “check-the-box” agility – implementations of Agile frameworks that meet the letter of the law but not the intent.

The report makes it clear that re-engaging leadership is non-negotiable for any sustainable change. Agile change efforts cannot be treated as an IT-side project or delegated to a transformation office without C-level ownership. Successful organizations “upgrade the management and leadership mindset” at the outset, before trying to change processes and operations.

In practice, this means CEOs and senior executives must be willing to learn, participate, and model agile ways of working themselves. They need to connect the transformation to the company’s vision and strategy (as we discuss below) and champion the change visibly. When leaders go first, demonstrating the adaptability and customer-focus they seek from teams, the rest of the organization is far more likely to follow.

Another insight from The Future of Agility is that the proliferation of one-size-fits-all Agile frameworks in the past decade yielded only shallow improvements in many cases.

This phenomenon – sometimes dubbed the “Agile Industrial Complex” (AIC) – refers to the booming industry of Agile certifications, consulting packages, and scaling frameworks that promised turnkey agility. Frameworks like the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), among others, became extremely popular as enterprises sought to roll out Agile at scale.

On the positive side, the AIC helped spread awareness of Agile methods far and wide. However, the report argues that it also contributed to misunderstandings and unrealistic expectations. Many organizations “did SAFe” (or another framework) and believed they had achieved agility, when in reality they had only implemented a set of processes without addressing deeper cultural or structural issues.

Over-reliance on big frameworks often led to a checklist mentality: if teams were doing stand-ups and PI Planning, leadership assumed the company was now agile. In truth, many such adoptions delivered “shallower than required” benefits.

Critics have pointed out specific limitations of frameworks like SAFe – for example, that heavy, centralized planning cycles can stifle team autonomy and flexibility, running counter to Agile’s intent.

In the rush to standardize Agile across a large enterprise, some frameworks became overly prescriptive and bureaucratic. Jeff Gothelf famously argued that “SAFe is not Agile”, noting that it often reinforces the very silos and stage-gates Agile was meant to eliminate.

The Future of Agility report echoes this sentiment: “transformations have been ‘bought in’ rather than internally grown from the core vision and strategy… and as a result have not improved the strategic outcomes as predicted. Many organisations have relied on ‘out of the box’ solutions such as SAFe and therefore have not made the deep cultural shifts or even operational flexibility that was promised.”.

In short, you can’t simply buy agility in the form of a framework or tool – real agility requires internal growth and change, especially in management thinking.

The report dubs the recent years’ over-commercialization of Agile as a short-lived industry that is now ending, because it failed to deliver lasting results.

Organizations that treated Agile as a packaged solution are now seeing those efforts plateau. They “scratched the surface of what could have been achieved” but stopped short of true business agility. Notably, most Agile frameworks don’t even address alignment with strategy or vision – a glaring omission that left transformations unanchored from what the business was actually trying to achieve. It’s no wonder many executives have “lost faith in the big A Agile” approaches.

The silver lining is that with the end of this Agile Industrial Complex, there is an opportunity to return the focus to core principles and outcomes. As Simon Powers puts it, it’s time to “reconnect with Agile’s foundational principles” and transform agility “from a corporate checkbox into a genuine engine of... innovation.” Organizations can move away from treating Agile as a branded initiative and instead embed agility as a strategic capability – tailored to their unique context and goals.

Why do so many Agile change efforts fall short of their promise? A key reason highlighted in the report is the misalignment between an organization’s vision/strategy and its operational changes.

In many companies, Agile implementations were driven at the operational level (e.g. within IT or project delivery teams) without sufficient linkage to a higher purpose or strategic intent. “Most of the change management is operational,” noted one survey respondent bluntly. The focus tends to be on delivery processes – improving how teams work – rather than on redefining what the organization is aiming to achieve or why. As a result, agile teams often operate in a vacuum, and their impact on real business outcomes is limited.

The report found that nearly all organizations it studied had approached agility in this piecemeal way: focusing on Agile methods in execution, but not incorporating agility into the company’s vision or strategic planning.

For instance, it’s common to see a company where the IT department is “being Agile” in how it delivers projects, while the business side’s strategy and budgeting processes remain unchanged – each side with its own vision, strategy, and metrics, never truly aligning. One leader quipped, “We are Agile, but have silo delivery teams – this is an oxymoron.”

Siloed efforts like this hinder progress; without a unifying vision, different parts of the organization pull in different directions. Moreover, if top-level strategy doesn’t embrace agile principles (like adaptability, rapid learning, customer-centricity), then operational improvements hit a ceiling. Teams may optimize their throughput, but the organization still struggles to pivot or innovate effectively because strategy and structure remain rigid.

Effective change management requires a balance across vision, strategy, and operations. The report emphasizes that neglecting the higher layers (vision and strategic alignment) “undermines long-term goals and the ability to adapt to future challenges.”

Without a clear, shared vision guiding the transformation, Agile adoption can devolve into aimless process change. Many organizations made this mistake: they “have not scratched the surface of what could have been achieved had they reviewed their vision and strategy and then upgraded the leadership mindset… before trying to adapt and change operations.” In practice, this means that before rolling out Agile teams or new tools, leaders should clarify: What is our North Star (vision)? How do we need to reshape our business strategy to be more adaptive and value-driven? Only then can operational changes (like Agile teams, new workflows, etc.) be truly effective and non-superficial.

The misalignment issue also ties back to leadership engagement. Often, senior leaders do articulate a vision at the outset of a change program, but then communication and alignment break down at lower levels.

The report shares an anecdote: executives believed they had clearly communicated a “clear and exciting vision,” but when teams were asked, their biggest complaint was “there was no communication of a clear vision.” This gap between the C-suite and teams indicates a failure to align all layers of the organization around a common purpose for the change. To address this, the report suggests concrete actions such as setting a compelling vision for change that aligns with organizational goals, and ensuring that vision is continuously communicated and agreed upon across the enterprise.

The bottom line is that agility must be driven by strategy – not just by IT or operations. Companies that marry a bold vision with agile execution will see far greater results than those that treat “Agile” as a standalone operational fix.

Even the most passionate change agents – Agile coaches, transformation leads, and change managers – can be rendered ineffective if they lack proper authority and resources.

A surprising insight from the Future of Agilityresearch is how often the people tasked with leading change have little visibility into or control over the budgets for those change initiatives.

In many organizations, Agile coaches and change agents operate in a kind of limbo: they are given the responsibility to “make Agile happen,” but not the formal power or budgetary backing to drive meaningful changes.

Simon Powers observed that Agile Coaches often have “a lot of responsibility and no authority.” (DC56: Why I wrote The Future of Agility report) It’s a classic case of accountability without empowerment, which virtually guarantees frustration and limited outcomes.

The report notes three contributing factors here.

First, the level of authority and transparency given to change leaders is usually not high enough; they are too low in the hierarchy to influence big decisions.

Second, in some cases there is no specific budget allocated to the transformation – it’s expected to happen within existing departmental budgets or as a side project. This lack of dedicated funding is identified as a “primary reason for lack of progress.”

Third, the scope of the change agent’s role is often too narrow; coaches might be limited to team-level practices and have no say in larger systemic changes, so real transformation is impossible. It’s telling that in the survey, nearly all change-makers interviewed said they did not have the authority to make the structural or policy changes required to enable true agility.

They bump into walls set by management silos or rigid governance, and those walls can’t be torn down from their level.

Funding models play a big role in this dynamic. The research found that when agile transformation roles are embedded within departmental headcounts (and funded by those departments), about 90% of people in those roles report lacking the authority to actually carry out their mandate.

On the other hand, if the change program is centrally funded and supported from the top, it tends to give change leaders more clout and cross-cutting ability. In essence, who controls the budget determines the change agent’s freedom to act. A department manager who is “paying” for an agile coach out of their headcount might restrict that coach’s influence to avoid upsetting other silos. By contrast, a centrally sponsored transformation office or budget can empower change-makers to work across boundaries. The report highlights this as a critical insight: transformation needs executive sponsorship not just in words, but in how resources and authority are allocated.

For change-makers reading the report (or this article), this finding is a call to action to seek out executive alignment on scope and budget early.

If you are tasked with leading an agility improvement, ensure that leadership has explicitly set aside budget for it and granted you the necessary decision-making latitude. If not, you may need to educate them – using evidence from this report – that without proper investment and authority, the initiative is unlikely to succeed. Agile transformations are often treated as low-budget, add-on efforts (“let’s do this with existing staff and minimal disruption”), but the data shows that skimping on investment or failing to empower change leaders will severely limit the impact.

A recurring theme in the Future of Agility report is that organizational structure can either enable or stifle agility. No matter how many Agile coaches or Scrum Masters a company employs, if teams are organized in rigid silos that don’t map to value creation, the flow of delivery will suffer.

The report reveals that many organizations are still far from achieving cross-functional, customer-centric team structures that Agile frameworks advocate. Despite “being Agile” on paper, these companies remain stuck in traditional org charts – for example, teams defined by functional specialty (development, testing, operations separately) or by component (backend team, frontend team, etc.), rather than by end-to-end product or customer journey.

Why is structural agility so elusive? According to the research, a few obstacles stand out. Mid-level managers often resist changing team design because their own roles and span of control are tied to the old structure. It’s an understandable human reaction – restructuring teams can threaten middle management positions or at least alter power dynamics, so there is inertia and sometimes covert push-back.

Lack of knowledge is another factor; some leaders simply don’t know how to redesign an organization for better flow of value. Agile transformation often involves concepts like feature teams, value streams, or product-centric operating models, which may be new to those who have spent decades in functional hierarchies. Without guidance, they default to familiar structures.

Technical constraints can also hinder team autonomy – for instance, if the software architecture is monolithic or tightly coupled, it’s hard to allow one team to deliver a customer feature independently from start to finish. In such cases, multiple teams must coordinate to deliver even small increments, reducing overall agility.

The report notes that few organizations have invested in the kind of platforms and automation that enable “single-piece flow” by autonomous teams.

The impact of suboptimal team structures is significant: it prevents true customer-centricity and fast flow.

Agile ceremonies and boards won’t help if, structurally, work still bounces between siloed teams or departments.

One survey respondent captured this irony well: “We are Agile, but have silo delivery teams, this is an oxymoron.”

The research underscores that team topology is a critical factor in an organization’s delivery capability.

In fact, when looking ahead, Simon Powers identifies team structures as one of the key areas that will shape the future of agility, alongside strategic tools and breaking down silos. To truly accelerate and become customer-focused, companies must redesign their organizations to support end-to-end value streams. That often means forming long-lived, cross-functional teams aligned to products or customer segments, and reducing layers of middle management that separate those teams from strategy and from customers.

Encouragingly, some organizations have started embracing this. The report mentions companies that have adopted coaching as a management approach and invested in leadership development, which often goes hand-in-hand with reorganizing around empowerment.

In such organizations, the culture shifts: managers become enablers or coaches for autonomous teams, rather than taskmasters for narrow functions. The contrast between companies that focus only on operational efficiency (and struggle) versus those that invest in new leadership and team models is stark. The latter tend to achieve much higher agility because their structure allows it.

The lesson is clear: agility isn’t just about process; it’s about org design.

Change-makers must pay attention to how teams are formed, how work flows, and how information moves through the organization. The Future of Agility report dedicates an entire section to team topologies and their effect on product development and customer-centricity , stressing that this is often a neglected but pivotal element of transformation. If your agile initiative has plateaued, it might be time to look at whether your org chartis the real bottleneck. A company truly poised for the future will be one that can restructure itself dynamically as needed to meet customer needs – in effect, an organization that is agile, not just its teams.

For those interested in a deeper dive into these findings, Simon Powers has also delivered a video presentation summarizing the Future of Agility report. In this engaging talk (available to watch on Vimeo), Simon walks through the data-driven insights and shares real-world examples of what they mean for organizations today. You can watch the full presentation here: Future of Agility Video.

In the video, Simon emphasizes the evolving nature of agility beyond the decline of formal Agile roles. He notes that even as titles like “Agile Coach” become less common, the responsibilities and needs for coaching and agility remain within organizations. The presentation highlights how companies are rebranding their change efforts and why that shift is happening. Simon also discusses leadership patterns, noting that in many firms leadership development has stalled – creating a split between organizations that double down on operational efficiency and those that invest in leadership and coaching to drive deeper agility.

This echoes the report’s finding that culture and outcomes diverge greatly depending on leadership engagement.

Another key topic in the video is the impact of funding models on transformation success. Simon illustrates with examples how a centrally funded change program can cut through silos, whereas initiatives funded within departmental budgets often leave change agents without real authority. He shares that roughly “90% of people” hired into change roles under department headcount report being unable to fully carry out their roles due to lack of authority – a compelling statistic that underscores the earlier point about budget and empowerment.

Viewers will also hear about future trends identified in the research, such as the importance of fixing team structures, introducing better strategic alignment tools (like OKRs or vision frameworks) at the senior level, and breaking down remaining silos in how work gets done. Simon concludes with a forward-looking perspective: the problems that agility seeks to solve (complexity, rapid change, customer demands) are not going away, so organizations must continue evolving their approach – the flavor of agility may change, but the journey continues.

Overall, the video serves as an excellent companion to the report, bringing the data to life with commentary and explanations.

We encourage you to watch the presentation to gain a nuanced understanding of the findings straight from the author. It’s an invaluable resource for anyone leading or sponsoring change: whether you’re a CTO, an Agile coach, or a business leader, the talk provides clarity on why some past efforts fell short and how to approach agility differently going forward.

If the report makes one thing clear, it is that tackling these multi-faceted challenges – leadership buy-in, strategic alignment, funding, team design – requires skilled change-makers who are prepared to navigate complexity.

Awareness of the problems is a start, but developing solutions and implementing them in a real organization is the true test. This is where the Deeper Change Academy’s Organisational Change Strategy coursecomes into play.

The academy has designed this program specifically to address the very pain points identified in the Future of Agility report, equipping change leaders with the mindset, tools, and techniques to drive sustainable transformation.

The Deeper Change Academy’s program emphasizes practical, hands-on learning – participants work through real scenarios to design effective change strategies. By practicing in a safe environment, leaders and coaches learn how to align teams with vision, engage stakeholders, and remove structural impediments to flow.

Simon Powers, the report’s author, is also the creator and lead instructor of the Organisational Change Strategy course. In fact, he has updated the course curriculum to integrate the latest insights from the Future of Agility research (DC56: Why I wrote The Future of Agility report).

This means that attendees will directly explore solutions to issues like leadership disengagement, shallow “framework-only” agility, and siloed change efforts. The course is built as a comprehensive journey for change-makers: its tagline “From frustrated coach to empowered changemaker” speaks to those who have felt stuck exactly because of the problems we discussed (e.g. lack of authority or misalignment) (Organisational Change Strategy).

Through this program, practitioners learn how to overcome those barriers and lead transformative change with confidence.

How the course addresses the report’s challenges: Each module and exercise in the Organisational Change Strategy course is crafted to tackle one or more of the critical challenges identified in the report:

The tone of the program is very much in line with thought leadership – it’s about visionary leadership for change.

It is designed for those leading change at various levels: whether you are a senior executive, a change program manager, an agile coach, or a consultant, the course meets you where you are and elevates your strategic change leadership skills.

By the end, the “frustrated coach” (or manager) is expected to become an empowered change-maker who can drive results even in a complex, volatile environment.

If you recognize the challenges described in the report within your own organization, the Organisational Change Strategy course offers a direct path to addressing them. Learn more about the program and how it can help you lead sustainable transformation on the Deeper Change Academy’s course page.

Enrollment is open for the next cohort, and it’s a unique opportunity to be mentored by Simon Powers and the Deeper Change team, leveraging the very latest research insights.

The world of “Agile transformations” is indeed at an inflection point. The Future of Agility report by Simon Powers shines a light on why many past efforts delivered only shallow agility – and more importantly, how we can foster deep, lasting agility moving forward.

The era of blindly following frameworks or conducting change by the book is giving way to a more mature era of organizational agility: one that acknowledges complexity, invests in leadership and people, and tailors change strategies to each organization’s unique context. In this future, agility is not a checklist or a certification – it is a continuously honed capabilityof the organization to sense and respond to change.

For change leaders and practitioners reading this, here are your calls to action

In conclusion, the future of agility will be shaped by those who are willing to look beyond Agile hype and address the deeper organizational changes required for true adaptability. That means engaged leadership, a clear vision and strategy, empowered change agents, adequate investment, and thoughtful team design.

It’s a tall order, but as the report demonstrates, the organizations that have aligned these elements are reaping the rewards of faster delivery, greater innovation, and resilience in the face of complexity.

By learning from their experiences – and from the collective research of over 300 respondents – we can chart a better course for our own transformations. The Future of Agility is not about abandoning agility, but about fulfilling its original promise: creating organizations that continually learn, adapt, and deliver value for their customers and stakeholders. With the right insights and capabilities, that future is within reach. Let’s begin the journey now.