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Model 28 of 74 · Operations & Delivery

Agile & Ways of Working Maturity Assessment

Assess how well your organisation works in iterative, customer-focused, empowered ways.

Pillars & areas

Value

Deliver what matters

  1. 01Customer Value & Outcomes
  2. 02Team Practices & Delivery Rhythm

Teams

Empower the people

  1. 03Empowerment & Collaboration
  2. 04Flow & Prioritisation

Adapt

Keep improving

  1. 05Leadership & Culture
  2. 06Learning & Adaptation

Levels

  1. 1Plan-DrivenFixed plans & big batches
  2. 2Agile TeamsIterative teams
  3. 3Organisational AgilityAdaptive at every level

01 Customer Value & Outcomes

Is work organised around delivering value to customers and measured by outcomes rather than output?

0/4 answered

CV-1How well do teams understand who their customers are and what they need?

Customers can be external or internal. Think about whether teams have direct contact with the people who use what they produce.

CV-2How is success defined for pieces of work?

Consider whether success means 'we delivered what was asked on time' or 'we achieved the change we wanted for customers or the organisation'.

CV-3How often does work reach customers so that real feedback can be gathered?

Think about the time between starting work and someone outside the team using or seeing the result.

CV-4How is large work broken down?

Consider whether big initiatives are split into small pieces that each deliver value, or into phases where value comes only at the end.

02 Team Practices & Delivery Rhythm

Do teams work in a steady, sustainable rhythm with practices that support delivery and transparency?

0/4 answered

TP-1How do teams plan and review their work?

Think about whether teams have a regular cycle of planning, checking progress and reviewing results.

TP-2How visible is the team's work?

Consider whether anyone can see what the team is working on, what is blocked and what is next.

TP-3How is quality built into the team's work?

Think about whether quality is checked at the end, or built in through shared definitions of done, reviews and early testing.

TP-4How sustainable is the pace of work?

Consider whether teams regularly work long hours to meet deadlines, or work at a pace they could maintain indefinitely.

03 Empowerment & Collaboration

Are teams cross-functional and trusted to decide how they do their work?

0/4 answered

EC-1How are teams structured?

Think about whether teams have all the skills they need to deliver, or depend on handoffs to other specialist groups.

EC-2How much authority do teams have over how they work?

Consider whether teams decide how to achieve their goals, or follow detailed instructions from above.

EC-3How well do teams collaborate when work spans several teams?

Think about how dependencies between teams are handled — through escalation or direct collaboration.

EC-4How stable are teams over time?

Consider whether teams stay together long enough to become effective, or are formed and disbanded around projects.

04 Flow & Prioritisation

Is the flow of work across the organisation managed, with clear priorities and limits on work in progress?

0/4 answered

FP-1How are priorities set across the organisation?

Think about whether there is a single, visible order of priorities, or competing demands from different leaders.

FP-2How does your organisation limit the amount of work in progress?

Consider whether teams and the organisation start more work than they can finish, causing delays everywhere.

FP-3How do funding and planning processes support flexibility?

Think about whether budgets are locked into fixed projects for a year, or can follow the most valuable work.

FP-4How is the flow of work measured?

Consider whether you know how long work takes from request to delivery, and where it waits.

05 Leadership & Culture

Do leaders and the culture support empowered, learning-focused ways of working?

0/4 answered

LC-1How do leaders set direction for teams?

Think about whether leaders explain the goal and the why, or specify tasks and solutions.

LC-2How safe do people feel to experiment and raise problems?

Consider whether people admit mistakes, challenge ideas and try new approaches without fear.

LC-3How does governance work with iterative delivery?

Think about whether approval and reporting processes fit the way teams work, or force them back into stage gates and heavy documentation.

LC-4How well do people practices support team-based working?

Consider whether objectives, reward, career paths and recruitment support collaboration and team outcomes, or individual heroics.

06 Learning & Adaptation

Does the organisation learn from its work and adapt its practices and plans accordingly?

0/4 answered

LA-1How do teams reflect on and improve their ways of working?

Think about whether teams regularly discuss what to improve, and whether those discussions lead to change.

LA-2How does learning spread across teams?

Consider whether lessons learned by one team reach others, or stay local.

LA-3How are measures used to guide improvement in ways of working?

Think about whether you measure things like delivery speed, quality, customer satisfaction and team health, and use them to learn rather than to judge.

LA-4How quickly does the organisation adapt plans when it learns something new?

Consider what happens when feedback or market changes show that a plan is wrong.

Self-assessment report

Agile & Ways of Working

Answer the questions above and your report builds here: an overall score, a score and target for each area, and the three changes that matter most.

About this model

About the Agile & Ways of Working maturity model

Agile started as a set of ideas about building software, but the underlying principles apply to almost any work done in uncertain conditions: deliver value in small pieces, learn from real feedback, give teams the autonomy to decide how to do their work, and adapt plans as you learn. Many organisations adopt the rituals — stand-ups, sprints, boards — without the substance, and end up with the same old command-and-control habits wearing new labels.

This model assesses ways of working rather than adherence to any particular method. It does not matter whether teams use Scrum, Kanban, a scaled framework or something home-grown. What matters is whether work is organised around customer outcomes, whether teams deliver frequently and learn from it, whether decisions are made close to the work, whether the flow of work across the organisation is managed, and whether leaders create the conditions for all of this to happen. It is designed for any function, not just technology teams.

The Agile & Ways of Working maturity model contains 24 questions across 6 areas: customer value and outcomes, team practices and delivery rhythm, empowerment and collaboration, flow and prioritisation, leadership and culture, and learning and adaptation. Each question describes three levels of maturity through observable behaviours. It is method-neutral and suitable for technology, product, operations, marketing, HR and other teams adopting more iterative ways of working.

Who this assessment is for

  • Leaders and executives sponsoring agile or new ways of working
  • Agile coaches, delivery leads and transformation teams
  • Team leads and product owners in any function
  • PMO and portfolio leaders moving from traditional to iterative delivery
  • HR and organisation design teams supporting new operating models

The three maturity levels

  • Level 1 — Plan-Driven: Work is planned in detail upfront and delivered in large batches, with customer feedback arriving late, if at all. Decisions flow down a hierarchy, and teams have little say in how their work is done. Too much work is started at once, priorities change without explanation, and success is measured by delivering to plan rather than by outcomes. Any agile practices are isolated and often ceremonial.
  • Level 2 — Agile Teams: Many teams work in short cycles, deliver regularly, gather feedback and hold retrospectives. Teams are cross-functional and largely self-organising within their scope. Work is visualised and prioritised, but funding, planning and governance across the organisation still often follow traditional patterns, creating friction between agile teams and the rest of the system.
  • Level 3 — Organisational Agility: Agility extends beyond teams to the whole organisation. Strategy is expressed as outcomes, funding follows value streams or persistent teams rather than fixed projects, and the flow of work is managed end to end. Leaders set direction and remove obstacles rather than directing tasks, teams are trusted to decide how to achieve outcomes, and the organisation changes course quickly and calmly when it learns something new.

The 6 areas assessed

1. Customer Value & Outcomes

How well work is connected to the people it serves. This area looks at whether teams understand their customers, whether goals are framed as outcomes, how often real feedback is gathered, and whether value is delivered in small increments that can be tested early.

2. Team Practices & Delivery Rhythm

How teams organise their day-to-day work. This area covers the regular cycle of planning and review, how work is made visible, how quality is built in, and whether the pace of work is sustainable.

3. Empowerment & Collaboration

How teams are structured and how much autonomy they have. This area looks at team composition, decision-making authority, collaboration across teams, and the stability of teams over time.

4. Flow & Prioritisation

How work is prioritised and how it flows across the organisation. This area covers prioritisation methods, limits on how much work is in progress, how funding and planning support flexibility, and how flow is measured.

5. Leadership & Culture

How leadership behaviour and organisational culture support or undermine agility. This area examines how leaders set direction, whether people feel safe to experiment and raise problems, how governance works, and whether HR practices align with team-based working.

6. Learning & Adaptation

How the organisation learns and changes course. This area covers team retrospectives, organisation-wide learning, the use of measures to guide improvement, and how quickly plans are adapted when circumstances change.

How this model relates to other frameworks

This is an original, simplified maturity model and is not derived from or intended to replace any of the following. However, organisations that use this assessment may also find value in these established frameworks:

  • Manifesto for Agile Software Development — the 2001 statement of values and principles that underpins most agile approaches
  • Scrum Guide — the official definition of the Scrum framework for iterative team delivery
  • Kanban Method — an approach to managing flow by visualising work and limiting work in progress
  • Scaled agile approaches (such as SAFe, LeSS and Nexus) — frameworks for coordinating agile work across many teams
  • Beyond Budgeting — a management model for adaptive planning and funding without fixed annual budgets

Frequently asked questions

What is the Agile & Ways of Working maturity model?

Assess how well your organisation works in iterative, customer-focused, empowered ways. It is an original, simplified model with three maturity levels (Plan-Driven, Agile Teams and Organisational Agility), assessed through 24 questions across 6 areas: Customer Value & Outcomes, Team Practices & Delivery Rhythm, Empowerment & Collaboration, Flow & Prioritisation, Leadership & Culture and Learning & Adaptation.

How long does the Agile & Ways of Working assessment take?

Most people finish in 10–14 minutes. Each of the 24 questions has three concrete answer options. Your progress is saved in the page URL, so you can bookmark it and come back later.

How is the score calculated?

Each answer scores 1 (Plan-Driven), 2 (Agile Teams) or 3 (Organisational Agility). An area's score is the average of its answered questions, and the overall score is the average of the area scores, so every area counts equally. Scores run from 1.0 to 3.0.

Is my data stored or shared?

No. Your answers are never sent to a server. They are stored only in the page URL, which you control. Copy the link to share results with colleagues, or export a PDF or CSV report.

How should I use the results?

Start with "Where to focus" in your report. It lists the questions with the biggest gap to the target you set for each area, and shows what the next level looks like in practice. For a fuller picture, ask several people from different teams to complete the assessment and compare their links. Differences in perception are often as revealing as the scores themselves.