Abstract In times of crises, such as the refugee crisis or the corona pandemic, the workload in public administrations increases because of the demands of citizens or short-term legal changes. In addition, there is an increasing need for digitalization or to be able to react flexibly to changes. Agile process models and agile practices are appropriate to overcome these challenges. The objective of this paper is to investigate how public administrations can measure their degree of agility to identify potential for improving it. The authors conducted a descriptive single-case study which included multiple units of analysis in a public administration in Germany. The case study was supported by their questionnaire for measuring the degree of agility. One outcome of this study is a conceptual framework that can be used to drive agile transformation in public administrations by continuously measuring agility. Therefore, a questionnaire for measuring agility at team level in public administrations has been developed. The application of the questionnaire in three teams provide insights into dysfunctionality in the interdisciplinary teams as well as optimization potential in terms of affinity to change. The adoption of agility in public administration is a challenge, given that resistance to change is still prevalent. A transformational change is a constant journey, and therefore, the measurement of progress plays an important role in the continuous improvement of an organization. The applied approach delivers high potential for improvement in terms of agility and provides interesting insights for both practitioners and academics.

Abstract Context: Twenty years after the publication of the agile manifesto, agility is becoming more and more popular in different contexts. Agile values are changing the way people work together and influence people’s mindset as well as the culture of organizations. Many organizations have understood that continuous improvement is based on measurement. Objective: The objective of this paper is to present how agility can be measured at the team level. For this reason, we will introduce our questionnaire for measuring agility, which is based on the agile values of the manifesto. Method: We developed a questionnaire comprising 36 items that measure the current state of a team’s agility in six dimensions (communicative, change-affine, iterative, self-organized, product-driven and improvement-oriented). This questionnaire has been evaluated with respect to several expert reviews and in a case study. Results: The questionnaire provides a method for measuring the current state of agility, which takes the individual context of the team into account. Furthermore, our research shows, that this technique enables the user to uncover dysfunctionalities in a team. Conclusion: Practitioners and organizations can use our questionnaire to optimize collaboration within their teams in terms of agility. In particular, the value delivery of an organization can be increased by optimizing collaboration at the team level. The development of this questionnaire is a continuous learning process with the aim to develop a standardized questionnaire for measuring agility.