Agility Case Study

The word “agility” has many meanings. The most well known definition of agility is the ability to be quick and graceful. The noun for agility can be used to describe both physical and mental skills in speed and grace (“Agility”, n. d.). According to the Korn Ferry (n. d.), in the context of enterprises, agility is described as an enterprise’s ability to quickly adapt to change in order to outperform the competition and drive growth in arising situations. A company’s agility depends on how well they are able to learn and adapt when confronted with either unforeseen or foreseen circumstances, dilemmas, crisis, or problems (Korn Ferry, n. d.). Agility and changeability is critical for any enterprise’s survival in the rapidly changing conditions
According to Hagland (2015), using UPMC’s data governance program, information has become much more organized; access to the correct data is made much easier, and actionable insights can be discovered. Before the data governance program was established, UPMC’s wealth of data was organized like, as Vikek Reddy, M.D. chief medical information officer in UPMC’s Health Service Division, puts it, a “note bloat”. The unorganized “note bloat” of data made it hard to define the prevalence of clinical conditions. Without a clear definition the prevalence of clinical conditions, problems emerged for those trying to use the data for research and personalized medicine (Hagland, 2015). Hall (2015), who further elaborates on Hagland’s article, explains that the data governance council that UPMC created was able to formalize and standardize the use of data across the enterprise. Thank to the data governance program, the “note bloat” problem was removed. Not only that, UPMC claims that their program improved patient outcomes and were able to save $15 million in medical costs (Hall, 2015). The data governance program has helped UPMC develop and maintain