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 Video's

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...

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 organizational...

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 top talents on board,...

Designing organizational structures, inside-out? Outside-in? Mixed?

Designing organizational structures, inside-out? Outside-in? Mixed? by Jurgen de Smet - Certified Creating Agile Organizations Trainer. When one designs an organization's structures, one can decide to do this either with an outside-in view from the end user...

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 from frameworks like...

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

In his talk, Cesario shares what you can do with Creating Agile Organizations as an Agile Coach and how it differs from LeSS (Large-Scale Scrum). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJnqDv2n8ro

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...