Denning's Agile Laws

"When the whole organization truly embraces Agile, the organization is less like a giant warship, and more like a flotilla of tiny speedboats."

Denning's Agile Laws are guiding principles. These laws emphasize the mindset and behaviors required to sustain agility within teams and organizations.

Denning's Agile Laws

The Law of the Small Team

Small, cross-functional teams are more effective than large, siloed groups. They should operate autonomously to deliver value quickly and efficiently.

The Law of the Customer

The highest priority is to create continuous value for the customer. All activities, processes, and decisions should focus on enhancing the customer experience.

The Law of the Network

Organizations should operate as networks rather than hierarchical bureaucracies. Teams and individuals should be empowered to connect, collaborate, and share knowledge seamlessly.

Scenario

A mid-sized retail company decides to improve its e-commerce platform to address declining customer satisfaction and increase online sales. They restructure their approach by applying Denning's Agile Laws.

Law of the Small Team: Empowered Cross-Functional Groups

The company establishes small, cross-functional Agile teams, each responsible for specific aspects of the platform (e.g., checkout process, product search, mobile optimization). These teams include developers, designers, testers, and Product Owners.

• What They Do:
  • Hold Daily Scrums to sync on progress and resolve blockers.
  • Use Kanban boards to visualize tasks and limit work in progress.
  • Empower team members to make decisions without waiting for hierarchical approvals.
• Benefits:
  • Decisions are made quickly, reducing delays caused by bureaucracy.
  • Team members feel ownership of the product, increasing engagement and productivity.
  • Collaboration fosters innovation as diverse perspectives are brought together.

Law of the Customer: Prioritizing Customer Value

The company conducts customer interviews, analyzes user behavior on the site, and identifies pain points, such as a slow checkout process and poor product search functionality. They focus on delivering solutions incrementally rather than waiting for a full-scale overhaul.

• What They Do:
  • Launch A/B tests to compare the effectiveness of new features.
  • Collect real-time feedback through post-purchase surveys and usability tests.
  • Prioritize backlog items based on customer feedback, such as streamlining checkout and improving search algorithms.
• Benefits:
  • Customers see immediate, tangible improvements, creating loyalty.
  • The team reduces the risk of building features that don't add value.
  • Faster iteration cycles keep the product aligned with customer expectations.

Law of the Network: Operating as a Collaborative Ecosystem

The company adopts a networked approach to decision-making and knowledge sharing. Instead of rigid departmental silos, teams use collaborative tools and practices to maintain transparency and enable quick action.

• What They Do:
  • Teams use tools like Agility by Digital.AI / Rally / Jira, Confluence / SharePoint, and Slack / Teams to share updates and insights.
  • Marketing shares analytics about promotions that drive traffic spikes.
  • Customer support teams relay common complaints to product teams in real time.
• Benefits:
  • Quick identification of trends or issues leads to faster responses.
  • Collaboration across departments reduces duplication of effort.
  • Teams align on shared goals, creating a unified focus on customer outcomes.

Benefits

By embracing Denning's Agile Laws, the company achieves:

1. Higher Customer Satisfaction: Incremental improvements show customers that their feedback matters.
2. Faster Time-to-Market: Smaller, empowered teams deliver features and fixes rapidly.
3. Improved Employee Morale: Autonomy and cross-functional collaboration foster a sense of ownership and innovation.
4. Organizational Agility: The networked structure allows for quick pivots in response to market changes or customer needs.

Summary

Agile operates under these laws that together generate the basics of the Agile organization. Practices may change, but the Agile mindset applying these 3 laws endure. These 3 laws enable observers to make sense of the particular Agile practices that may or may not be applicable.

• The 1st law, the law of the small team is the best known because that's what received the most attention of the early Agile adopters.
• The 2nd law, the law of the customer, is the most important because it is the law that makes sense of the other two laws and permits the greatest insight into why an Agile organization operates the way it does.
• The future of Agile is about the implement the 3rd law, the law of the network, the whole organization operating as an interactive network.

The impact of high-performing teams and the customer focus will be sub-optimal unless organizations create and learn from dynamic networks. When that happens and the three elements combine and focus on a common external goal, then businesses will benefit from the explosive increment in value that comes from truly embracing Agile.¹