A nucleus for change: the University of Stuttgart’s Agility Lab as a space for experimentation

In the article, the authors show how collaboration within the self-organised team at the Agility Lab creates an initial experimental space for testing new forms of working, selecting suitable approaches, and adapting them for the University of Stuttgart. Building on this, these methods, processes and digital tools are discussed and tested within an agile community, implemented in pilot teams and projects, and disseminated through programmes for multipliers.

It has become evident that, in particular, those agile working methods (e.g. Liberating Structures, Kanban boards) that can be implemented with little time investment and that only incrementally change existing processes can be effectively disseminated through the agile community and communication initiatives.

For pilot teams, retrospectives have proven to be helpful for the further development of collaboration at the university, largely regardless of the work context. The agile OKR framework has been and continues to be integrated relatively flexibly into existing structures and processes by some teams in various areas. However, the continuous use of agile frameworks by teams remains a major challenge. For example, it has not yet been possible to attract a sufficient number of managers to support the introduction of agile frameworks across entire departments of the university.

By working on projects such as developing solutions for software-supported process management and providing methodological support for a major digitalisation project, the self-organised, interdisciplinary and flexibly deployable AL team has provided important impulses for the further development of work processes and structures. However, the AL team’s experience with less successful projects also shows that such a unit should, as far as possible, concentrate on methodological support and the organisation of cross-departmental collaboration, while leaving the subject-specific work to the respective specialist departments.

Further content from the article is available in the excerpt for the publisher. The current print issue of OrganisationsEntwicklung (ZOE) is also available at the Agility Lab.