For its Manager Barometer 2018/19 , the consultancy company Odgers Berndtson surveyed a total of 2,460 managers from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Three quarters of them said that they regard management methods such as “Agile Leadership” as effective, with 60% claiming to be using them already. Managers from the technology, media and telecommunications sectors revealed themselves to be most open to flat hierarchies, followed by the energy industry and consultancy companies. In their use of agile methods, IT departments are ahead of production and research and development. As far as the methods themselves are concerned, stand-up meetings are particularly popular. But sub-project groups (kanban), regular project reviews and cross-functional teams (scrums) are already widely used according to the survey.

The fact that modern management methods can be a success factor in the context of Industry 4.0 was evident from the 2018 German Industry 4.0 Index compiled by the consultancy company Staufen. In the survey, 29% of companies that were actively working on digitization cited agile management structures as a reason for their success. Even more important factors, however, were development of specific expertise, a structured approach and a high level of acceptance among staff.