My Services
New to Agile and/or Scrum?
You may have heard about Scrum in the Harvard Business Review. You may have heard about agility in Forbes. What are they really? Just another business fad? What can they do for me and my organization?
Nudging an existing evolution?
Your team has been working with an agile mindset for awhile now but perhaps you feel your learning has stalled or you've been unable to achieve what you thought you could. The objective of this engagement is to give you considerations for what cultural, structural, and procedural changes might best enhance the organization’s agile capabilities and performance.
Applying agility outside software/IT?
Using experience from manufacturing environments, oil and gas construction (including EPCM), energy operations, hardware, and non-profit work domains, We can explore the application of agile fundamentals and Scrum values to your non-software products and projects.
Developing Leadership skills?
In a broad sense, leadership agility is the ability to take wise and effective action amid complex, rapidly changing conditions. But agility is not a single competency. It is a vital capacity that can be channeled into everything you do as a leader. As you develop new levels of agility, you become more forward looking, more effective at collaborating, more creative, and more proficient in learning from your experience. Developing these skills is crucial to leading your organization’s evolution.
New to Agility and/or Scrum?
IS AGILITY RIGHT FOR YOU?
Organizational Agility Exploration
This THREE day workshop will answer the following questions:
What is agility and, specifically, Scrum?
Why would your organization benefit from agility and Scrum?
What are the likely implications, to your organization, of traveling down that path?
What might it feel like as a team to embrace agility?
Are you ready, as an organization, to travel down that path? (See Agility Readiness Exploration workshop below)
What would we need to do to start down this path?
How might an organizational transformation unfold in terms of training and coaching?
Who will benefit from this workshop?
Product development team members
Organizational leaders and functional managers
ARE YOU READY?
Organizational Agility Readiness Assessment
You already understand why you should embark on a path towards a more agile organization. Now you need to understand whether your organization is ready to take on the cultural and mechanical shifts required to truly travel down that path.
This TWO day workshop will answer the questions:
What do you think are the biggest obstacles to change within our organization?
What is the current state of your Portfolio/Product management practices as well as your product development practices and how do they support or detract from an agile approach?
How does your current organizational structure and culture support or detract from an agile approach?
What would it take to ensure your leadership continues to support us in this transformation?
Who will benefit from this workshop?
Product development team members
Organizational leaders and functional managers
GET CERTIFIED
Certification for Scrum Alliance CSM or CSP via coaching
As a Scrum Alliance Certified Enterprise Coach I recommend candidates for the Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Master and Certified Scrum Product Owner exams based on providing 25 hours of personal/team coaching to the candidate(s).
This is an alternative to taking a 2-day (16 hr) course from a Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Trainer. In either path, the candidate needs to write and pass the CSM/CSPO exam before receiving the certification.
For some organizations, teams, or individuals, achieving this certification via coaching will be more appealing and effective than a public CSM training course because:
Candidates can practice the concepts and skills acquired in the context of their day-to-day work with a coach as their guide.
The training can be less intense and spread over a number of weeks with contextual meaning built along the way.
In-depth discussions are now possible with your colleagues and a coach as a guide.
We can draw on experience from applying Scrum to software, construction, and manufacturing domains.
This path to Certification usually takes anywhere from two to four weeks depending on the focus of the participants and the resulting intensity of the coaching.
Nudging an existing evolution?
WHERE DO YOU WANT TO GO?
Organizational and Team(s) Agility Assessment
The assessment consists of:
Sprint boundary observations and review of team progress artefacts
Individual team member interviews
30-45 mins each focused on how team members participate on the team and their thoughts on their ability to meet their own goals as well as meet the organization’s expectations of them.
Team self-assessment
Facilitation of the team’s self-assessment of agile capabilities to be used as a gauge for future improvement. Facilitation of the team’s discussion of impediments to performance.
Interviews with Product Management, Development Management and Executive Management
30-45 mins each focused on how leadership views their role with the team, the goals of the team, how the team is measured, and the team’s ability to to meet Payload’s goals.
A report will be issued which will cover:
Sprint boundary event and artefact observations
Trends from team member interviews to help understand organizational culture
Results of team self assessment compared to snowdolphin observations/assessment
Results of team exercise to discover impediments and priorities/impacts of addressing those impediments
Considerations and Recommendations for the team and leadership to increase their performance
FOCUS YOUR (AND YOUR ORG’S) TIME AND ATTENTION
Collaboration/Communication Conventions
Regardless of your organization’s approach to product development and operation in general, a key facet to improving effectiveness is establishing agreements around how we communicate and collaborate.
This HALF-DAY workshop will answer the following questions:
What are communication conventions and why are they valuable?
What problems occur as a result of NOT using common conventions?
What medium of communication is appropriate for given situations / outcomes?
What communication conventions could we use in:
Email communication
Organizing meetings
Attending meetings
How can we establish working agreements in these areas?
Who will benefit from this workshop?
All organizational members
Product development team members
Organizational leaders and functional managers
Get Started
Focused Coaching/Consulting
Using a myriad of professional coaching techniques, I can help your organization and teams uncover new ways of connecting with their work and each other, improve their effectiveness and reach their goals.
Working alongside leaders, to develop strategies for business growth, organizational agility, and portfolio management.
Working side-by-side with managers and teams to help you discover how to execute on strategies for growth, organizational agility, and skill development at all levels of the organization.
Requires a commitment to a minimum of 3 days
Until Covid-19 is behind us …
Using common video conferencing tools (Teams, Zoom, Facetime) I can engage with my clients across the world and in different timezones without the need for travel expenses.
Applying agility outside of software?
IS AGILITY RIGHT FOR YOU?
Organizational Agility Exploration
This THREE day workshop will answer the following questions:
What is agility and, specifically, Scrum?
Why would your organization benefit from agility and Scrum?
What are the likely implications, to your organization, of traveling down that path?
What might it feel like as a team to embrace agility?
Are you ready, as an organization, to travel down that path? (See Agility Readiness Exploration workshop below)
What would we need to do to start down this path?
How might an organizational transformation unfold in terms of training and coaching?
Who will benefit from this workshop?
Product development team members
Organizational leaders and functional managers
ARE YOU READY?
Organizational Agility Readiness Assessment
You already understand why you should embark on a path towards a more agile organization. Now you need to understand whether your organization is ready to take on the cultural and mechanical shifts required to truly travel down that path.
This TWO day workshop will answer the questions:
What do you think are the biggest obstacles to change within our organization?
What is the current state of your Portfolio/Product management practices as well as your product development practices and how do they support or detract from an agile approach?
How does your current organizational structure and culture support or detract from an agile approach?
What would it take to ensure your leadership continues to support us in this transformation?
Who will benefit from this workshop?
Product development team members
Organizational leaders and functional managers
GET STARTED
Customized Training and Focused Coaching
Using a myriad of professional coaching techniques, I can help your organization and teams uncover new ways of connecting with their work and each other, improve their effectiveness and reach their goals.
Working alongside leaders, to develop strategies for business growth, organizational agility, and portfolio management.
Working side-by-side with managers and teams to help you discover how to execute on strategies for growth, organizational agility, and skill development at all levels of the organization.
Requires a commitment to a minimum of 3 days
Until Covid-19 is behind us …
Using common video conferencing tools (Teams, Zoom, Facetime) I can engage with my clients across the world and in different timezones without the need for travel expenses.
Looking for Leadership development?
CONTINUE YOUR LEADERSHIP JOURNEY
Assessment and Development Action Plan
Professionals grow through a series of predictable, learnable "agility levels" based on well documented stages of developmental behaviour. The Leadership Agility 360 is the only assessment that identifies where you are in this developmental process – that is, in evolving from a tactical problem-solver into a strategic manager, and then into a visionary, capacity-building leader, always retaining the skills you gained at previous levels:
Traditional 360’s assess rather abstract competencies with little or no reference to the contexts within which you use them.
The Leadership Agility 360 assesses your agility level within each of these 3 “action arenas.” There are 8 quantitative questions and 2 written-comment questions (strengths and needs for improvement) for each arena:
Leading organizational change: taking initiatives to improve an organization and its key relationships
Improving team performance: taking initiatives to improve a team and its key relationships
Engaging in pivotal conversations: person-to-person discussions with important outcomes at stake
Agile leadership requires four mutually reinforcing types of agility. The Leadership Agility 360 assesses these behaviours within each of the three action areas described above.
Context-setting agility: The extent to which the changes you undertake are tactical and incremental versus strategic or even visionary
Stakeholder agility: How completely you understand and create alignment with stakeholders whose views and objectives differ from your own
Creative agility: How insightful and creative you are in analyzing and solving the complex, novel problems generated in turbulent business environments
Self-leadership agility: How proactive a leader is in seeking feed- back and in experimenting with new and more effective behaviours.
The outcome of this assessment is a feedback report with a concise, actionable roadmap to skill development.
SEE WHAT’S POSSIBLE
Agile Leadership Workshop
This THREE day workshop will explore the impact of leadership style on agile ‘transformations. We’ll discuss these topics (and others):
Why Agile Leadership?
What do you as a leader need to understand about agility?
The importance of teams
Motivation
Self Organization
Team Performance Models
The impact of leadership on high performance teams
Organizational Agility
What factors influence the culture of a organization?
What challenges will multiple teams experience?
What corporate structures enhance organizational agility?
What governance policies enhance and detract from agility?
The Self Awareness Required in Leadership Agility
What do we need to know about ourselves as leaders to inspire others?
What mind shifts do we need to make to help an organization continuously learn?
What leadership styles and behaviours support agile principles and values?
Leadership vs/and Management
How can we incorporate feedback to foster our growth and the growth of our teams?
How can we engage with others to increase trust and collaboration
Leading Organizational Change
What change management approaches align with agility?
What organizational metrics can enhance or detract from agility?
GET STARTED
Focused Coaching/Consulting
Using a myriad of professional coaching techniques, I can help your organization and teams uncover new ways of connecting with their work and each other, improve their effectiveness and reach their goals.
Working alongside leaders, to develop strategies for business growth, organizational agility, and portfolio management.
Working side-by-side with managers and teams to help you discover how to execute on strategies for growth, organizational agility, and skill development at all levels of the organization.
Requires a commitment to a minimum of 3 days
Until Covid-19 is behind us …
Using common video conferencing tools (Teams, Zoom, Facetime) I can engage with my clients across the world and in different timezones without the need for travel expenses.