Quick Guidance

If continuous improvement has stalled, or team results aren’t where you’d like them, we can help you get traction. We’ll assess the situation from all angles: the teams’ human makeup and current methods; working relationships and collaboration modes; management system and practices; value flow and business environment; technical debt and engineering practices. We’ll recommend a practical roadmap toward your desired goal, identify challenges, and discuss mitigation strategies. (We’re quick with this service; we won’t hang around for weeks, or tie up your people’s time in long meetings.)

More and more, we meet people in non-software departments and businesses who are attracted to the promise of Agile, but aren’t sure how to make it work in their special context. Without realizing Agile is a transformation of their approach to people and work, they adopt popular practices such as boards, stickies, sprints, and standups. Even though Agile could be applicable to them, their practice-driven adoption (which is tricky even for “mainstream” software contexts) is not likely to succeed. Over a couple of meetings, we’ll take your group through the right conversations, guide and advise at critical junctures, and help you produce a mindful adaptation that sticks.

If you’d like to be Agile with your next major undertaking, but your situation doesn’t seem to fit popular frameworks, we’ll help you customize Agile to your context. We’ll work with the key players on team and process design. We’ll help them pinpoint work values, elicit assumptions, and choose principles. Using those, we’ll support the design of a baseline process and team structure. And then we’ll help you facilitate an effective kick-off of the new structure.

If your executives want candid, realistic, and unbiased responses to their concerns, look no further. In this 2-3 hour session with your senior leadership, we’ll establish a shared, accurate understanding of the Agile paradigm; express the needs, expectations, pitfalls, and implications of an Agile transformation; and discuss workable strategies and tactics for leading the change.

Important: We are not affiliated with any large consulting group or certification scheme, so when we say unbiased, we mean unbiased.

If a key milestone of a large initiative is coming up, consider holding a plenary workshop before starting work on the next phase. The purpose may be to draw lessons from the last few months, to improve on some dimension of work, or to consider deep changes for the next few months.

Critical to this event is to get all the participants — not just management — to do the thinking, collaborating, and deciding. We’ve facilitated many such events, and even though they’re short (rarely longer than a day), they’ve all resulted in visible increases in engagement, satisfaction, and performance. If you want greater self-organization and empowerment, such an event is the best vehicle for your intent.

We will collaborate with you on planning a successful workshop: purpose, agenda, invitation, deliverables, process, etc. And if you prefer, we will facilitate it for you (such events must be led by experienced facilitators.)

If your organization is adopting Agile unassisted and you’re hitting a snag, wanting a sounding board, or looking for independent advice, contact us. Spend a half-hour, one-hour, or even half a day with Gil Broza on the phone and get the answers you need.