Agile M&A

Developed originally by software developers to create a more efficient, client-driven process, the Agile project management methodology is now successfully utilized by many, varying industries to spur productivity and collaboration.

However, the financial industry largely still relies on traditional management approaches, such as Waterfall, first designed to support predictable processes like manufacturing and construction. These traditional approaches benefit programmatic, predictable operations and fail to deliver adequate value in the highly dynamic and ever-changing environment of M&A.

At its core, Agile is a problem-solving mindset—a way of conceptualizing and responding to constantly-changing environments—which values spontaneity, creativity, and swift reaction to novel situations over established procedure, itemization, and static workflow. Agile is adaptive instead of predictive, iterative instead of sequential, and flexible instead of rigid.

In M&A, the needs of every deal are unique. Adopting a traditional, programmatic project management style is likely to lead to duplicate work, lost information, procedural bottlenecks, and limited cross-functional visibility. Approaching M&A with an Agile strategy allows team members to react quickly to emergent conditions.