Agility in Strategic Planning

Agile management is a way of leading and organizing work based on adaptability, collaboration, and quick response to change. It involves a flexible and iterative approach to planning, decision-making, and implementation, emphasizing teamwork, feedback, and continuous improvement. Instead of following a rigid plan, the organization adapts to changes in the environment to deliver value to users faster and achieve strategic goals. In strategic management, agile management means managing the strategy through small, flexible steps. Rather than relying on long-term and unchangeable plans, the organization continuously monitors results, learns, and adjusts its objectives to remain competitive in a dynamic environment.

Agile management originated from the practice of agile software development, defined in the Agile Manifesto [3]. Its core principles include iterations, constant user feedback, team self-management, and continuous improvement. Managers become facilitators rather than controllers — they remove obstacles and encourage team autonomy [4]. A facilitator is a person who enables progress, helping a group work better together and understand their shared goals. A facilitator often remains neutral and does not take sides in a discussion.

Agile management in schools and universities involves a shift from strict, centralized control toward support and guidance of teams. Instead of all decisions being made by the administration with an expectation of perfect adherence to a fixed plan, leaders become mentors — removing obstacles, supporting initiatives, and fostering accountability at the team level. The key is to measure actual progress and learning processes, not just formal task completion.

For this purpose, methods such as Scrum, Kanban, Lean Startup, and Design Thinking are often applied:

• Scrum is a way of working that helps teams create valuable results in an organized and fast manner. Work is divided into short periods called “sprints” (usually lasting 2–4 weeks). At the beginning of each sprint, the team agrees on what to do, checks progress daily, and at the end of the sprint, presents results and lessons learned. The main idea: learn through small steps and improve continuously.
• Kanban is a method that helps visualize and better manage work. It uses a board (physical or digital) with columns such as “to do,” “in progress,” and “done.” Each task is represented by a card that moves across these columns as work progresses. The main idea: visibility, balanced workload, and avoiding team overload.
• Lean Startup is an approach to developing new products or services that says: don’t spend too much time and money before verifying what people actually want. Instead of a big plan, create a minimum viable product (MVP), test it with users, and decide the next steps based on feedback. The main idea: learn fast, spend little, and adapt to the market.
• Design Thinking is a problem-solving approach that starts with understanding people and their needs. The process usually includes several steps: empathize with the user, generate ideas, create a prototype, and test it. The main idea: put the user at the center and use creativity to find the best solutions.

Agile management is particularly important in the context of digital transformation, as technology continuously introduces new challenges in teaching, assessment, and communication. An agile approach allows for rapid testing of new ideas, learning from feedback, and continuous improvement of content and methods — in small iterations and with the involvement of all participants.

Example:

A good example of an agile way of working is the company Spotify, which in 2012 developed its squads and tribes model. Each squad is a small, autonomous team (around 6–12 people) with its own goal and freedom to decide how to work. A squad functions like a small startup — it plans tasks, sets priorities, and uses methods such as Scrum or Kanban. Several squads working on similar product areas form a tribe, which facilitates knowledge sharing, alignment, and joint presentations of results. Each tribe is led by a tribe lead, who helps teams secure resources and stay focused on shared goals. This model allows Spotify to maintain the agility of small teams while ensuring coordination for complex projects. Working in short cycles, called sprints, reduced the time from idea to finished product from several months to just weeks. In this way, Spotify demonstrates how agile management can be successfully applied in large organizations — while preserving speed, creativity, and team accountability [5].