About Applied Agility
Applied Agility is a framework for enterprise transformation, the book series that operationalizes it, and the body of knowledge that documents it. This page is about why we built it, how it operates, and how we work together.
Why we built this
We kept seeing the same patterns across decades of practice. A leadership team commits to a transformation. The organization invests millions in methodology training. Six quarters later the velocity charts have moved and the strategy is still stuck. Senior leaders ask what went wrong. Practitioners point at governance. Coaches recommend more training. Vendors pitch the next framework.
The existing literature offers either high-altitude philosophy ("be like Spotify") or rigid instruction manuals ("run these ceremonies"). Neither helps a leader staring at a unique constraint that doesn't fit the textbook. The actionable middle, the place where diagnosis connects to action under real organizational conditions, is where the books, articles, and frameworks aren't.
Applied Agility is the missing middle. Diagnostic on one side, operational on the other. Built to be picked up by a real organization with a real mess and used on Monday.
What we built it to do
The framework's job is to bring together what most agile literature keeps separate. Diagnosis and response in the same book. Diagnosis matched to the operating context, not borrowed from a textbook. Improvement architected as iteration, not staged as a transformation event. Each of those choices fights a default failure mode of the field. Together they shape what Applied Agility does at every altitude of a knowledge-work organization.
The three Guiding Principles on the homepage (Practical Actionability, Incremental Improvement, Context-First) compress this stance into pillar form. The framework's specific moves, the Three Barriers diagnostic, the Value Acceleration Process, the structural gaps under each barrier, are how those principles show up in practice. The body of knowledge is where each piece gets the depth treatment.
How we work together
Every book, every article, every framework concept is co-authored by Curtis Hibbs and Joshua Barnes. We use the Lennon-McCartney model: both names go on every piece of work, regardless of who held the pen on a given section. The byline is Curtis Hibbs and Joshua Barnes. That's the structural truth of how the framework develops.
Applied Agility doesn't fragment into "Curtis's part" and "Joshua's part." Concepts develop in conversation. Each one gets tested against the other author's field experience before it stabilizes. Disagreement is the editing process. Agreement is the publishing trigger. Both of us have to stand behind every line for it to ship.
Individual bios live on the authors page.