Agile transformation is increasingly becoming an executive responsibility rather than an engineering initiative. That was the message from the 2026 Global Top Agile CEO Awards, where 14 executives from industries including manufacturing, healthcare, construction, financial services, technology and education were recognized for applying agile principles beyond software development and into broader corporate decision-making.
Agile has spent decades associated with software teams, sprint planning and engineering organizations. Increasingly, its advocates want to move the methodology much higher up the corporate hierarchy.
That was the central theme at the fourth annual Global Top Agile CEO Awards, held at the National Taiwan University Hospital International Convention Center alongside RSG Taipei 2026, the Scrum Alliance’s officially licensed Regional Scrum Gathering Taipei.
More than 200 executives and agile practitioners attended the ceremony, where 14 leaders were recognized from 26 submitted examples of agile leadership and organizational adoption.
Roger Chou, a board director of the Scrum Alliance and founder of the award, argued that agile should be understood less as a software-development technique and more as an operating mindset for organizations facing rapid and unpredictable change.
The distinction is increasingly relevant as companies contend with artificial intelligence, changing customer expectations, economic uncertainty and shorter technology cycles.
Agile approaches typically emphasize iterative delivery, continuous feedback and decentralized decision-making. The objective is to surface problems earlier and allow organizations to adjust before a small issue becomes an expensive strategic mistake.
Agile’s next frontier is executive decision-making
The award’s organizers deliberately focused this year’s recognition on senior leadership.
Chou said agile initiatives rarely become stuck with engineers themselves. The more difficult transition occurs when organizations attempt to apply agile principles outside technology departments, where budgeting, organizational hierarchies and conventional decision-making processes can limit experimentation.
That makes executive sponsorship critical.
The approach has already found supporters among major technology and consumer companies, including Google, Amazon, Meta, Netflix, Spotify and Tesla, although the degree to which each organization applies agile practices varies considerably.
Taiwanese companies including Chunghwa Telecom, Galaxy Software Services Corporation and Cathay United Bank have also adopted elements of agile methodologies.
The broader enterprise-agile movement is now attempting to translate lessons from product development into areas such as finance, human resources, investment banking, education and corporate strategy.
Three different paths to enterprise agility
This year’s top three winners illustrate how differently agile transformation can begin.
Wei-Chuan Su, chairman of Nan I Book Enterprise Co. and the Nan I Education Group, received first place after leading a traditional publishing business through a digital transformation culminating in the formation of the Nan I Education Group in 2025.
The case illustrates an important distinction between digitization and organizational agility. Moving products into digital formats does not necessarily make a company agile. The deeper transformation involves changing how teams make decisions, respond to customers and coordinate across functions.
Second place went to Chun-Chien Yu, general manager of the Productivity Innovation Business Group at Galaxy Software Services Corporation. With more than four decades in software, Yu has worked across human resources, knowledge management and financial-services products while pursuing major-account growth and new business models.
Third place went to Chen-Yuan Lo, chairman of Mason Capital Inc., who has applied agile principles to investment banking through an “agile venture-building” model intended to help companies connect with international capital markets, including Nasdaq and the Singapore Exchange.
The three examples share a common thread: agile is being treated as a mechanism for organizational adaptation rather than a methodology confined to software delivery.
The enterprise-agile talent problem
The awards also highlighted a less visible part of the transformation equation: talent.
Alongside the CEO awards, RSG Taipei introduced an Enterprise Agile Talent Development Award, designed to recognize organizations that have invested in developing agile practitioners at scale.
The organizers based the new recognition primarily on the number of Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) and Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) professionals developed within participating organizations, using existing enterprise data to identify companies with significant investments in agile talent.
That approach reflects a practical challenge for large companies.
Enterprise agile transformation cannot be achieved simply by telling departments to “be agile.” Organizations need people who understand product ownership, iterative planning, Scrum practices, cross-functional collaboration and continuous improvement.
Training numbers do not prove that an organization is agile. But they can provide a measurable indicator of whether a company is building the internal capability required for broader adoption.
Why enterprise agile is becoming more complicated
The evolution of agile leadership comes as enterprises face a technology environment that changes faster than traditional planning cycles.
Generative AI is one example. Companies adopting AI often need to experiment with use cases, collect feedback, evaluate risk and modify deployments rapidly. Those activities naturally align with iterative approaches, but they also require governance and executive oversight.
The same applies to digital transformation, cybersecurity, customer experience and new product development.
McKinsey research has repeatedly found that organizational and leadership factors play a significant role in digital transformation outcomes, reinforcing the idea that technology adoption cannot be separated from changes in operating models and management practices.
For HR and workforce leaders, this creates another consideration: agile transformation changes not only processes but also expectations around leadership, team autonomy and skills.
From methodology to management philosophy
Agile’s biggest challenge may therefore be its own success.
The term is now used to describe everything from software development frameworks to corporate transformation programs. That creates a risk that “agile” becomes a label rather than a meaningful operating practice.
The Global Top Agile CEO Awards are attempting to push the conversation in the opposite direction by focusing on measurable organizational examples and senior leadership involvement.
The 11 other 2026 recipients span energy and environmental services, plastics manufacturing, construction, healthcare, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, cybersecurity, technology and academia.
That diversity is significant.
If agile remains primarily an engineering methodology, its relevance will be limited to organizations with substantial software-development operations. If the underlying principles can be adapted to executive decision-making, talent development, product strategy and business-model innovation, agile becomes part of a much broader conversation about how enterprises operate.
The emerging enterprise model is unlikely to mean every department adopting identical Scrum processes.
Instead, the more durable lesson may be that organizations need shorter feedback loops, clearer ownership, stronger cross-functional collaboration and the ability to change direction without waiting for an annual planning cycle.
That puts agile where its advocates increasingly want it: not at the edge of the enterprise, but closer to the decisions that determine its direction.
Market Landscape
Enterprise agile is evolving as companies move from team-level agile adoption to organizational agility.
The first wave largely focused on software engineering and product development. The newer wave involves leadership teams, business operations, HR, finance, customer experience and corporate strategy.
For enterprises, the challenge is scaling agile without creating process bureaucracy. Certification programs can build foundational skills, but sustainable adoption requires changes to incentives, governance, decision rights and leadership behavior.
The rise of AI adds another dimension. Organizations experimenting with AI need to balance rapid iteration with security, compliance, responsible AI governance and measurable business outcomes.
For HR leaders, agile transformation also creates demand for new workforce capabilities, including cross-functional collaboration, product thinking, adaptive leadership and continuous learning.
The new Enterprise Agile Talent Development Award points toward an emerging measurement category: how much agile capability an organization has actually developed, rather than simply whether it has launched an agile initiative.
Top Insights
- The Global Top Agile CEO Awards recognize executives applying agile beyond engineering, highlighting its expanding role in corporate strategy, transformation and organizational decision-making.
- Nan I, Galaxy Software Services and Mason Capital illustrate different routes to enterprise agility across education, software and investment banking.
- A new Enterprise Agile Talent Development Award measures organizational investment in Certified ScrumMaster and Product Owner talent as a leading adoption indicator.
- Agile transformation increasingly depends on executive sponsorship, cross-functional collaboration and decentralized decision-making rather than simply adopting Scrum within technology teams.
- AI and accelerating digital transformation may increase demand for iterative operating models that combine experimentation with governance, accountability and human judgment.
Join thousands of HR leaders who rely on HRTechEdge for the latest in workforce technology, AI-driven HR solutions, and strategic insights
