Learn about CAO

Learn about CAO

Articles, interviews and confernce talks

Our articles and video’s about Creating Agile Organizations (CAO) principles and practices. Below you can find an executive overview of the CAO approach, read about the fundamental elements of the CAO approach, its axioms, principles and guidelines in our case studies. There is also the CAO Guide. This guide helps organisations on their journey towards agile organisational design.

executive overview

Explore how to develop an operating model grounded in the realities of your unique challenges and opportunities.

In collaboration with Scrum.org, Cesario Ramos & Dave West (CEO of Scrum.org) wrote this executive summary to explore key concepts for designing and creating agile organizations using a systems-inspired approach. 

Don’t miss out on this essential guide for modern business leaders looking to stay ahead of the curve.

Mockup Whitepaper CAO

Explore our Case Studies, Articles and Videos

Mastering Agile Evolution | Strategic Agility Ahead

Mastering Agile Evolution In this session, Jurgen de Smet, dives into the challenges and opportunities of designing organizations for strategic agility..

Evolving Agile Organizations For the Future | Keynote Scrum Gathering 2024

Evolving Agile Organizations For the Future In this thought-provoking session from the Regional Scrum Gathering Belgrade 2024, Cesario Ramos, a global leader in large-scale transformations, dives into the challenges and opportunities of evolving agile organizations....

Capability-Driven Transformation: The Key to Sustainable Agility

Capability-Driven Transformation: The Key to Sustainable Agility By Cesario Ramos. A key difference between Toyota and many other companies is how they develop their organizational capabilities over time. As the graph shows, Toyota's approach leads to steady, ongoing...

The Real Question We Should Be Asking About Agile Transformation

The Real Question We Should Be Asking About Agile Transformation By Cesario Ramos. The Real Question We Should Be Asking About Agile Transformation From 2022 to 2024, Digital Transformation (DT) spending in Western markets is projected to reach a staggering $6.3...

How Frequency and Type of Dependencies Shape Your Team Structure

How Frequency and Type of Dependencies Shape Your Team Structure By Cesario Ramos.   The way work flows through your teams—especially when it comes to dependencies—plays a important role in determining whether product-focused teams or specialist teams will work...
Creating Agile Organizations (CAO) Circle overview

Agile Organization Design: Moving Beyond Size Logic

Agile Organization Design: Moving Beyond Size Logic by Cesario Ramos. Historically, many companies adhered to the 150-person rule for organizational units, a concept based on "Dunbar's number." This rule suggested that 150 is the cognitive limit to maintain stable...
Designing Agile Organizations (DAO) approach

Redefining Agility: Evolving Our Operating Model as a Scrum Master

Redefining Agility: Evolving Our Operating Model as a Scrum Master By Cesario Ramos.  In our relentless pursuit of excellence and efficiency, Scrum Masters play an important role in guiding organizations through the adoption of agile frameworks. However, it's time to...

Don’t confuse Product-Level and Organizational Adaptability in Agile Organizations

Don’t confuse Product-Level and Organizational Adaptability in Agile Organizations By Cesario Ramos.   Adaptability is a key component of any successful organization. It's important not to confuse product-level adaptability with organizational adaptability. While...

Product Definition Explained in 10 min

Product Definition!  By Cesario Ramos. The world of Agile product development A critical yet often overlooked aspect is defining your product effectively. A robust product definition goes beyond what’s listed in the catalog—it's the foundation of your organization's...

Measure Transformation, Not Conformation

Measure Transformation, Not Conformation By Cesario Ramos. The core of agile isn’t conforming to some framework but the ability to adapt, respond, and deliver value efficiently. Hence, when measuring agile transformation, focus on the newly developed capabilities of...

Agile Organization Design: Moving Beyond Size Logic

Agile Organization Design: Moving Beyond Size Logic by Cesario Ramos. Historically, many companies adhered to the 150-person rule for organizational units, a concept based on "Dunbar's number." This rule suggested that 150 is the cognitive limit to...

Product Definition Explained in 10 min

Product Definition!  By Cesario Ramos. The world of Agile product development A critical yet often overlooked aspect is defining your product effectively. A robust product definition goes beyond what’s listed in the catalog—it's the foundation of...

Creating Agile Organizations Explained in 5 min

Cesario Ramos explains the Creating Agile Organizations approach in this short video.Creating Agile Organizations is a systemic approach to designing and coaching agile organizations. It’s based on principles, guidelines, and axioms. Cesario Ramos,...

Measure Transformation, Not Conformation

Measure Transformation, Not Conformation By Cesario Ramos. The core of agile isn’t conforming to some framework but the ability to adapt, respond, and deliver value efficiently. Hence, when measuring agile transformation, focus on the newly...

Creating Agile Organizations For LeSS Coaches

Usefull Differences Between CAO and LeSS To Understand The Creating Agile Organizations (CAO) approach is about creating agile organizations that can easily be adapted, it is not about (de)scaling Agile and it is not the same as LeSS. I love LeSS,...

A Discussion about Agile Organizational Design

Host Dave West of Scrum.org interviews the authors of the book, Creating Agile Organizations, A Systemic Approach, Cesario Ramos and Ilia Pavlichenko. They chat about their motivation behind the book, problems with traditional...

Evolving Your Own Framework

Evolving Your Agile Organizational Framework By Cesario Oliveira Ramos Meet Sara, a driven product director who's always up for a challenge. But with ambitious targets to attract 10,000 new clients, increase customer satisfaction by 35%, and keep...

Creating Agile Organizations: Designing Your Path to Agility

Creating Agile Organizations: Designing Your Path to Agility By Cesario Ramos. The Creating Agile Organizations approach is about designing your own organizational framework and coaching its adoption. It is important to note that it is different...

Enabling Multifunctional Learning

Enabling Multifunctional Learning Cross-functional teams are capable of quickly testing hypotheses and adapting to changes in the market. They are the primary block of an Agile organization. Unfortunately, the load on different specializations and...

Building for Agility: The Role of Commodity Platforms

Building for Agility: The Role of Commodity Platforms By Cesario Ramos. One of my clients had a platform called the “Internet channel” that was intended to increase user conversion and usability. The idea was great - the platform was supposed to...

Are you familiar with Agile Organization Design?

What is Agile Organization Design? By Cesario Ramos. It's a powerful approach to designing organizations that allows for adaptability to customer demands. According to organizational design expert Jay Galbraith, there are five key components that...

Develop Enterprise Agility With Product Groups

Develop Enterprise Agility With Product Groups Cross-functional team is the basic structural block in Scrum. It is a self-managed unit that optimizes speed of learning and flexibility. When multiple cross-functional teams are working on the same...

Video – How to Create an Agile Organization

Video - How to Create an Agile Organization Creating agile organizations is hard work, requires patience, humour, and long-term commitment. It can take many years to simplify your organization and discover how to make agility work in your...

The Critical Agile Organization Design Guideline

The Critical Agile Organization Design Guideline Second blog, in a blog series about the upcoming book: Creating Agile Organizations – A Systemic Approach, by Cesario Ramos & Ilia Pavlichenko. Many problems at the workplace are not the fault of...

The Critical Agile Organization Change Guidelines

The Critical Agile Organization Change Guidelines Fourth blog, in a blog series about the upcoming book: Creating Agile Organizations – A Systemic Approach, by Cesario Ramos & Ilia Pavlichenko. Resisting change during adoption is a normal human...

​What does it mean to be Agile on a large scale?

First, in a blog series about the upcoming book: Creating Agile Organizations – A Systemic Approachby Cesario Ramos & Ilia Pavlichenko. ​What does it mean to be Agile on a large scale? According to Craig Larman, a renowned consultant,...

Guiding The Organization in Multi-Skills development

Guiding The Organization in Multi-Skills development The sixth blog, in a blog series about the upcoming book: Creating Agile Organizations – A Systemic Approach, by Cesario Ramos & Ilia Pavlichenko. A successful team works together...

What does Your Team Optimize For?

What does your Team Optimize For? By Cesario Ramos. The canvas below shows four characteristics of development teams. On the y-axis, you can plot the level of cross-domain work your team picks up. It goes from working on a Single Domain (top) to...

Designing the Product Owner Role

Designing the Product Owner Role The eighth blog, in a blog series about the upcoming book: Creating Agile Organizations – A Systemic Approach, by Cesario Ramos & Ilia Pavlichenko. In this blog, a short description of one workshop from...

Creating Agile Organizations Interview with Cesario Ramos

Diego Callizo interviewed Cesario Ramos about his new book. We kept the interview short (20′) and to the point. Here are some of the insights: How can managers benefit from this book?The risk of rolling back #changeThe ratio of organisations...

Creating Agile Organizations

Below is an excerpt from the introduction of the book: Creating Agile Organizations. A Systems Thinking Approach to Creating an Agile Organization  Why do people repeat the same unsuccessful behavior in organizations? Why do certain problems...