SCHOOL OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES

UNIVERSITY OF JOS

CENTRE FOR GENDER AND WOMEN STUDIES

COURSE TITLE:

GENDER, SOCIAL CHANGE AND CHANGE MANAGEMENT

TOPIC:

THE GENDER IMPLICATION OF CHANGE MANAGEMENT IN AN AGILE

ENVIRONMENT

BY:

ANSLEM A. FELICIA CHINONYEREM

UJ/2017/CGWS/0009

LECTURER:

MR. AUSTIN ONYEKE (M.Sc.)

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 INTRODUCTION

As stated in The Global Competitiveness Report 2011-2012 elaborated by the World

Economic Forum (2011), the world economy moved in 2011 around US$80.33 trillion in GDP

(PPP1). In keeping with IMF (2012), at exchange rates, the economic output of the world is

expected to expand by US$28.7 trillion from 2010 to 2017. In addition, the New York Stock

Exchange (NYSE) is a stock exchange where the largest companies in the world, which are

responsible for producing most of the wealth generated by those mentioned countries, negotiate

their capital. The market capitalization of the New York Stock Exchange listed companies,

encompassed US$14.24 trillion as of December 2011, as well had as average daily trading value

approximately US$153 billion in 2008.(Antin K., Byrne R., Geber T., van and Geffen S.2013)

Undoubtedly, this is a very competitive context where the decisions should be made

sometimes without the complete information required, as well as they should be communicated

to the relevant sectors of the organization, which must have the capability to respond and redirect

their actions to these changes in a wide and coordinated manner. Any mistake might cost

millions of dollars or even can cost the business survival. Indeed, improving the competitiveness

of governments and companies should result in significant economic outcomes. Competitiveness

seems related to make more, better and faster, with less resources (Janssen & Estevez, 2013).

At the same time, governance is closely related with the ability to steer (to guide, to

govern) an organization, which may be a company, a government or a society (Bloom, 1991). In

other words, governance is a key driver to “make things happen” on organizational environment.

Also, “to be” and “to look” is deeply related with transparency in decisions, actions and results

of an organization, something closely related with governance. These thoughts would guide us to

imply that the way to competitiveness pass by the application of a “good governance”

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(UNESCAP, 2013; World Bank, 2006). In this context, the information and communication

technologies (ICT or IT) are the link between the decision-making ability, the willingness

strategic, and the competence to put into practice these tactics concretely. In this scenario, IT

governance, through which corporate governance2 is applied, has emerged as an option to the

effective management and control of IT services in organizations (IT Governance Institute,

2001).

In addition, the design and maintenance of the InformationTechnology systems for

enterprise agility are challenging when the products and services must be compliant with several

regulatory aspects (often needing to be audited) (Wright, 2014). The establishment of the

necessary management instruments and governance mechanism to fulfill this mission passes by

the application of models and frameworks that many times have no guidance details of how to

implement and deploy them such Information Technology Infrastructure Library(ITIL) and

Control Objectives for Information Technology(COBIT) among others, affecting the

organizational competitiveness. from the foregoing, agile governance can hence be defined thus:

“Agile governance is the abilityof human societies to sense, adapt and respond
rapidly and sustainably to changes in its environment, by means of the
coordinated combination of agile and lean capabilities with governance capabilities,
in order to deliver valuefaster, better, and cheaper to their core business”
(Monasor, M., Vizcaíno, A., Piattini, M., Noll, J., & Beecham, S. 2013) 41– 46.

Agile change management is a term that is picking up momentum around the world using a lot of

the ideas from the emerging agile methodologies. In only four years, things have moved on

quickly, and wanted to capture how this term is now being interpreted in the world of change

management. Agile means different things to different people. Agile is a buzzword that everyone

is talking about, but which is interpreted differently depending who you talk to. When in the

boardroom, Agile is perceived as a mechanism for implementing change faster and getting ideas

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to market ahead of the competition. It is seen as a competitive advantage and strategically

important. However, at a senior level the problem is that it is regarded as a mechanism, when it

is a cultural change, because it is not a set of processes, it is a way of thinking and behaving. For

individuals in IT development and delivery, Agile is represented by a collection of

methodologies including Scrum, Scale Agile Framework and Agile Program Management.

While this group follow the principles and techniques of Agile, too often they don’t have the

clout to implement the cultural change needed to gain wide adoption of their approach. For those

in project and change management, Agile is too often a way to deliver change, but without the

rigor offered by framing it as an initiative. Therefore, they are working with project teams who

want to get on and deliver, and who have little patience for producing the business case, the

strategies for managing people, quality and approach. Why are Agile methods so popular? The

world is an uncertain place, which means that the certainty needed to plan any initiative in detail

at the start and manage that plan over several years is no longer appropriate. It is better to begin

with an idea of the capability you want to achieve but remain flexible as to how it becomes a

reality. In this way, it is possible to respond to shifts and changes in markets, customer and

supplier requirements, innovations in systems and the use of data. I think the adoption of Agile

approaches has grown exponentially as it is a logical answer to uncertainty. Start small, don’t

plan everything at once and expect changes. A natural response to uncertainty is not to commit

all your resources to a solution that might not be the right answer. It is better to create part of the

solution, try it out and get the feedback from those affected as to how effective it is before

deciding what element of the overall solution to deliver next.

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 THE CONCEPT OFAN AGILE ENVIROMENT

An Agile environment deals with methods concerned with iterative delivery, delivering

early in the lifecycle to create return on investment as soon as possible. This early return on

investment helps to fund more deliveries that take place frequently throughout the life of the

change initiative. This is a description of Agile development, most commonly used by IT, but

also applies to agile marketing campaigns, training programmes and implementations of new

products and services. An Agile environment is distinct from traditional methods (often referred

to as a waterfall style) because they do not wait until every aspect of the initiative has been

completed before the deliverables are handed over to users. In these traditional projects, as

change comes at the end of a significant amount of work, and is packaged as one change, only

one wave of change management activities is needed. However, the change might be significant

and need a lot of explanation, with many amendments and innovations to business as usual. In an

Agile approach, change is frequent, therefore, it is assumed that each of the changes create only a

small amount of change to business as usual. However, there is need to be able to manage

multiple waves of change. In an Agile environment, change management requires frequency of

change generated by Agile approaches hence suggesting that the traditional change management

activities have to speed up.( Luna, A. J. H. de O., Kruchten, P., & de Moura, H. P.

(2013)Essentially, it entails creating mini waves of change to take place alongside delivery of

change to the business. These mini waves of change can only be achieved if an organization has

a well-developed approach to leading its staff through change. Each of these mini-waves of

change comprise key elements of the change process that are needed to support people through

change. Each of the mini-waves are inter-related, with each contributing to the successful

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adoption of new ways of working. Scope–clarifying what will and will not change as a result of

the project deliverables.(Lynham, S. A., &Chermack, T. J. (2006).

What needs to change in an agile environment will affect who needs to be involved and what

changes they will have to make, so it is important that in Agile change management there is a lot

of sharing of information between those responsible for project delivery and those responsible

for creating new ways of working which are common traits of an agile environment. Stakeholder

Analysis and Impact Assessment–identify who must change their ways of working in response to

the tangible changes being delivered and carry out a tactical impact assessment that examines

what processes, standards, metrics and data must change as a result. Change Message-ask basic

questions about how much customers or suppliers need to know about this change and decide on

the key messages about the change that staff must be given. Change Plan-identify all the change

activities that enable those impacted to participate in the change and capture these in the Change

plan.

An agile environment it is helpful to ‘automate’ these activities. Make them as simple to

understand and easy to carry out as possible, so that they can be undertaken quickly (because the

time between changes is short) and frequently (because the volume and regularity of change is

high).As part of the completion of every Sprint, run through a checklist of points to ascertain the

scope of the changes to business as usual that need to take place.

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 THEORIES OF AGILE GOVERNANCE IN AN AGILE ENVIROMENT.

FOUNDATIONAL PREMISES OF THE THEORY

The agile governance phenomena emerges in the context of organizational environment,

as a young and nascent area, eight years old, driving people to apply agile capabilities upon

governance capabilities to provide business agility .( Luna, A. J. H. de O., Kruchten, P., & de

Moura, H. P. (2013). The predominant concern of them is to deliver value faster, better and

cheaper to the business in sustainable cycles. On the organizational context, governance is the

keystone to create the necessary engagement of all units of the organization, attaining greater

enterprise agility and supporting its overall strategy.

Premise 1: The first theory introduces agile governance as the application of agility upon the

system responsible for sense, respond and coordinate the entire organizational body: the

governance (or steering) system. Differently from specific agile approach widely held on

organizations (such as agile software development or agile manufacturing), in which the

influence is limited to a localized result, usually few stages of the chain value (Porter, 1985) of

the organization .( Luna, A. J. H. de O., Kruchten, P., & de Moura, H. P. (2013).

Premise 2: The 2nd theory deals with the positioning of the phenomena, which can be implied

by agile governance as socio-technical phenomena positioned in a chaordic range between the

innovation and emergent practices from agile (and lean) philosophy and the status quo of the best

practices employed and demanded by the governance issues. The socio-technical nature of agile

governance is substantiated due we are handling with the understanding of the intersections

between technical and social aspects: considering people as agents of change in organizations, in

contexts where technology is a key element .( Luna, A. J. H. de O., Kruchten, P., & de Moura, H.

P. (2013)

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Premise 3: Finally, the third premise is the definition of agile governance as a broad concept and

its meta-principles, and meta-values proposed in .( Luna, A. J. H. de O., Kruchten, P., & de

Moura, H. P. 2013)

 Meta-principles: We have proposed the following six meta-principles for agile governance,

in order to guide future researches and, especially, to drive practices .( Luna, A. J. H. de O.,

Kruchten, P., & de Moura, H. P. (2013).

(i) Good enough governance: “The level of governance must always be adapted according to

the organizational context”.

(ii) Business-driven: “The business must be the reason for every decision and action”.

(iii) Human focused: “People must feel valued and incentivized to participate creatively”.

(iv) Based on quick wins: “The quick wins have to be celebrated and used to get more impulse

and results”.

(v) Systematic and Adaptive approach: “Teams must develop the intrinsic ability to

systematically handle change”.

(vi) Simple design and continuous refinement: "Teams must deliver fast, and must be always

improving."

 Meta-values: In order to achieve better results, it is believed that teams should use those

meta-principles, having the support of meta-values to guide actions, which in turn also can help

them to differentiate the approaches of both: conventional and agile governance. As a

consequence of this research we have come to value the meta-values natural or acquired skill or

talent. We have tried to encompass any kind of organizations, such as: companies in any

industry, non-profit institutions, as well as governments in any level or conjunction (cities,

provinces, countries, or even governments associations, e.g. The United Nations). An informal

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term that includes all forms of value that determine the health and well-being of the firm in the

long run.

GENDER IMPLICATION OF CHANGE

In contemporary times, gender role attitudes (GRAs)and actual gender roles impact on well-

being thus resulting in a change in the human society, we will examine the implication of change

in associations with GRAs, three roles (marital status, household chore division, couple

employment) and psychological distress in working-age men and women.( Bhaskar F. Popham

K. Hunt 2015) Thus, investigating time-trends reflecting broader social and economic changes,

by focusing on three age groups at two dates. Analytics, online surveys, comments, social media

Cutting across a global mobile platform targeting 14-16 year old vulnerable girls in an online

magazine and discussion format. It aims to build users’ confidence and skills online to help them

fulfill their potential offline by tackling issues such as how girls can help their families

financially, how to make meaningful friendships, and how to navigate puberty. Springster does

this in an informative and entertaining way, encouraging girls to come back and discover more.

Researchers from Girl Effect are using a range of methods to better understand how users’

engagement and participation relate to changes in girls’ lives before and after they read content

on which thus expose them to acquiring information Springster and engage in conversations with

other users. By using several data sources, including Google Analytics, comment analysis, online

surveys and social media analytics, researchers are combining big data with traditional

approaches to learn more about the intersection of digital behavior, participation in community

spaces and engagement with content and how participation in this online safe space influences

change.

AGILE ENVIROMENT AND ITS INFLUENCE ON GENDER RELATIONS

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The effect of an agile environment and its influence on gender in recent times cannot be

overemphasized as same has aided and assisted in creating a more reliable and efficient system

of behavioral communication of information which constitute what agile governance seeks to

achieve. Thus an agile environment have put up certain influences as a result of gender relations

of which such influences have rather resulted in a better and efficient agile environment. Some of

the influences thus considered hereunder:

1. The influence of the agile environment on gender has resulted in creating a combined and

coordinated manner, to achieve better results in their core business. This state is

characterized by high values as well as probably serendipitous values .

2. Another influence of an agile environment on gender is that it has created a system that

fits organizational contexts which have already reached a primary level of organizational

sustainability and competitiveness by application of the gender theories in an agile

environment.

3. The agile environment has sharpened Organizational sustainability which arises when

high values are reached in the organizational context and their combined and coordinated

application results and contributes to diminishing the inhibition and restriction of the

organizational context, even without changing significantly As a result, the gradual

decrease in values accelerates the increase in the environment which in turn enhances

efficiency.( Monasor, M., Vizcaíno, A., Piattini, M., Noll, J., & Beecham, S. (2013)

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 RECCOMENDATIONS TO THE NIGERIAN SOCIETY

It is thus recommended that for Nigeria to attain its highest potential and key into the

developments in an agile environment and ensuring there is development in the said sphere, the

need to promote gender equality can not be sidelined as same constitute one of the tools adopted

in ensuring efficiency in such an environment as it relates to behavioral assessment of

information in a contemporary society. Therefore to achieve the goals and objectives in the

management of an agile environment especially the gender implication of change management in

such an environment, there is the need for synergy between the stakeholders in achieving such

goal more so that the primary essence of such environment is to enhance better and effective

communication and the behavioral pattern in disseminating such information.

CONCLUSION

Basically, essential and vital role gender plays in an environment will aid in achieving a

breakthrough especially considering the implication of same on gender in an agile environment

to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. Sources such as social media

trails, call data records, radio data, satellite imagery and other “digital exhaust”, both alone and

combined with traditional data sources can shed light on the lives of women and girls. However,

we should also be cautious of the limitations of big data. There remain concerns with its use,

including that careless interpretation of big data might lead to disproportionate representation of

those who are capable of producing these trails (for example, it is possible to fail to include those

who do not have access to technology, are not online or prefer not to engage). Data use also

requires adequate normative frameworks, stronger implementation mechanisms for protection of

privacy, including tools for mitigating risks of harms to not only individuals but also groups of

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individuals. Access to big data may also be a challenge, as it may be expensive and requires

technical knowledge to retrieve, handle and store. In addition, analytical skills are expensive – in

some cases, the data itself might be free, but deriving insights may have high associated costs,

especially for budget-constrained organizations. Bearing these concerns in mind, and with

appropriate applications of big data to certain populations (for example, using radio data for

offline communities), big data analytics hold huge potential for UN Women as a fast-evolving

source of knowledge that can provide valuable insights about women and girls and for women

and girls. The contribution in particular has helped monitor important improvements in an agile

environment.

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