My Book on Agile Org Design

Enterprisers Project—a joint initiative of Harvard Business Review and RedHat—featured it as a must-read on the recommendation of John Marcante, CIO of Vanguard—the investment behemoth.

The book was also featured by Digital Leaders with a recommendation from Nick Williams, then-Managing Director, Consumer Digital, Lloyds Banking Group.

Sriram’s “Agile IT Org Design” should have been titled “great answers for your unanswered questions”. I can’t stop citing it. —Ricard Vilà, Chief Digital Officer, LATAM Airlines

"adds an important team execution business context for architects"—Eben Hewitt, Chief Technology Officer, Sabre Hospitality

"If you follow the advice in this book, your organisation will be the better for it. "—Dave Farley, co-author of the original book on Continuous Delivery 

"we were inspired in part by *your* book "—Matthew Skelton, author of the book, Team Topologies

"My book and the knowledge around creating adaptable and agile operating models would not have happened if it wasn’t for Srirams book Agile IT Organization Design. There is a reason that the Team Topologies authors cite it as an inspiration for the team topologies patterns." — Scott Millet, CIO, Iglu.com

Here's  a fuller list of pre-publication endorsements and selected reviews by readers.

ThoughtWorks UK hosted me for a book launch talk in 2015. Here's a video recording.

We explore tech organization from a structural angle. We discuss how to differentiate between organizational activities and outcomes and form teams accordingly, how to execute streams of work that cut across different product-centric teams and the role of project and program managers in a product-centric operating model. 

We do not always take the time to write a nice review for stuff we like. Thank you, kind readers. I don't personally know most of you. 

Charles Betz, VP @ Forrester, 2015

Deep. Wide. Credible. Current. All those adjectives apply. In this overview, Sriram Narayan has successfully integrated a wide variety of experience and principle into a comprehensive, Agile-informed discussion of organizational design, particularly in the context of IT delivery. 

jfoster, 2024

I have 26 years experience leading process improvement transformations and 16 years implementing Agile. This book is great! So many people who write “agile” books or try to teach it focus on the history and the mechanics of scrum, this book goes deeper . I highly recommend to all to deepen your knowledge.

Mr P J Mackay, 2017 

Great read, a must for every CIO wanting to reshape their IT organization to support the new world. 

Phil Magrogan

Clearly one of the best books I have read in the past five years ... 

P. Hodgson

This book has the clearest and most applicable advice I've seen on what organizational shifts are needed to make agile really hum, and why. Very accessible and easy to read, but also full of some pretty deep hard-won wisdom on what works and what doesn't. I'll be recommending this to anyone who is looking to really leverage agile processes for their teams or organization. 

Joerg Guenther

Absolutely fantastic; well explained and thought through. Highly recommend it! 

GV

A book I keep returning to, again and again. The principles are set out very clearly, and concepts are developed from those principles very logically, in a gradual crescendo of depth and intellectual thoroughness. If time allows, I suggest giving this book two reads: the first one to understand and appreciate the complexity and multi-faceted nature of the problem at hand (how to design an organization around Agile principles), which are very completely explained, and the second one to extract from the book the aspects that most directly apply to your organization.  

Sue

Offers both great clarity and insight into alternative ways of thinking and tackling organisational design and governance.