With the new Manifesto for Enterprise Agility, PMI and the Agile Alliance provide guidance for organizations that want to remain capable of making decisions and taking effective action — even under uncertainty.

Today, many companies struggle with too many projects, too much bureaucracy, and too little impact. But how can true Enterprise Agility be achieved in practice?

In our work, we deliberately challenge traditional ways of thinking in project portfolio management — practical, controversial, and free from methodological dogma.

As described in Wolfgang Friesicke’s article, the Enterprise Agility Manifesto provides an important impulse to help organizations become faster, more adaptable, and more effective.
At the same time, project portfolio management is showing an alarming picture.
Studies show that project portfolio results have been getting worse for years. Projects take longer, employees are completely overloaded, and the expected business value of projects and portfolios is often not achieved — despite enormous corporate investments in processes, methods, and tools.
This is a particularly serious problem for German SMEs. And SMEs are a key economic pillar of Germany.
At PMI Germany Chapter, we want to contribute to increasing innovation capability and competitiveness in SMEs through Enterprise Agility.

That is why the SME Community of Practice is now launching this initiative:
Implementing Enterprise Agility in SMEs – Pragmatic and Effective

Over the coming months, we will develop concrete and quickly applicable recommendations that help companies achieve Enterprise Agility — not as a theoretical model, but as lived management practice. 

Today, many companies are trapped in complexity:

• too much bureaucracy and reporting
• too much effort without decisions or progress
• too many parallel projects

As part of our work, we also want to critically question “old truths” in project and portfolio management — old truths that lead companies into this complexity trap and thereby prevent the achievement of Enterprise Agility.

We are convinced:
Enterprise Agility does not emerge from adding more processes, more governance, or even better tools.

Enterprise Agility emerges from focus, trust, transparency, fast decisions, and the ability to deal with uncertainty.

We do not want to engage in theoretical methodology debates. We are looking for practical relevance. Pragmatic and effective.

These are the topics we will work on in the coming months:

• Which existing mindsets and “old truths in project portfolio management” prevent Enterprise Agility?
• What should replace them?
• Which management principles can help companies implement Enterprise Agility NOW — as pragmatically and measurably as possible? 

Especially SMEs need pragmatic management principles that create impact quickly and can be implemented with reasonable effort. 

If this sounds interesting to you, then join us.

Challenge us, critically question our theses, and work with us on implementing Enterprise Agility in SMEs.

We are looking for practitioners:

• entrepreneurs
• project managers
• portfolio managers
• executives
• transformation experts

People who are willing to:

• engage in controversial discussions
• critically question existing ways of thinking
  
• openly contribute their experience

The focus is not on glossy presentations, but on honest discussions about real problems and real solution approaches that can demonstrably prove themselves in practice.
Our ambition is to develop a pragmatic and quickly effective implementation approach for Enterprise Agility.

Has this sparked your interest?

If you would like to learn how you can contribute, what results you can expect, and how you can benefit from this work, simply send us an informal email at: cop-kmu@pmi-gc.de

We will then invite you to our free kickoff event, which will take place in the coming weeks.

PMI Germany Chapter membership is not required to participate in the kickoff event.