An Agile transformation is the deepest change your organization will ever undergo. Unfortunately, executives are often presented with biased, partial, or false information about it. If your senior leaders want candid, realistic, and unbiased responses to their questions and concerns, look no further.
In this 2-3 hour session, 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 you’d like to be Agile with your next major undertaking but the situation is complicated, using a popular framework or cobbling together “best practices” may not be a good idea. Instead, you need to customize Agile, from first principles, to your context.
We’ll work with the key players on alignment around values, constraints, and assumptions. We’ll guide the design of a suitable workflow, effective team structure, and good practices. And we’ll help you facilitate a successful kick-off to make all of that real.
Read a case study of doing this at one of Canada’s largest banks.
If you’d like to take your Agile implementation to the next level or to get it unstuck, we’ll help you figure out the best way forward. Spoiler alert: it’s almost never a matter of process, tools, or adherence to a framework.
We’ll assess the entire ecosystem, examining such aspects as culture, leadership approaches, management practices, team dynamics and ways of working, agility across the value stream, IT-business interactions, technical agility, and safety. Instead of looking for compliance with specific processes — which a tool could tell you — we analyze how your human system makes Agile-minded choices in its unique context, and uncover the root causes of the gaps. Ending with a deep conversational review (and optionally with a written report), we’ll recommend a practical roadmap and high-value actions toward your desired goal, identify challenges, and discuss mitigation strategies. We only need a few days and we don’t tie up anyone’s time in long meetings. Note: this is step one in our Contextual Agile system.
“We asked Gil to help us figure out how our talented, passionate team could become a cohesive unit. He only spent two days with us, but people were blown away by how spot-on his observations were, and how he made people very comfortable discussing even the most uncomfortable topics. Using his findings and recommendations, we are now working collaboratively on putting together a roadmap to becoming a better, more effective Agile team. This engagement was well worth the investment!” — Andrei Cornienco, VP Software Engineering & Infrastructure, Pethealth
Interested? Ask Gil Broza for a sample of an assessment’s review meeting.
Agile teams and organizations benefit from collaboration, but not only on day-to-day work. Bring your people’s wisdom to bear on critical junctures, such as drawing lessons from recent events, roadmapping a new initiative, or upgrading your Agile implementation. The key here is to hold plenary events that get everyone — not just management — to do the thinking, collaborating, and deciding. Such events are rarely longer than a day, and while they involve a large number of people, are well worth the investment if done effectively and efficiently: beyond achieving their official outcome, they greatly advance the Agile culture.
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.)
Are you leading a non-software group, and finding the promise of Agile appealing? Not sure what’s a good way to adopt it?
While Agile is applicable and beneficial to many pursuits outside of software development/IT, its implementation there may look quite different. In fact, popular mechanics (such as sprints and user stories) and frameworks (such as Scrum) may not be suitable for you. You need an implementation that works in your specific context.
Call on us, and we’ll take your group through the right conversations, guide and advise at critical junctures, and help you design a practical implementation that sticks.
Gil is able to get people to try new things, even if they are a little uneasy about moving in the new direction... As well, Gil helped me develop a roadmap for our Agile deployment, which eventually extended to over 400 people.
- Bob FischerVP, Fidelity Investments
I hired Gil to help with planning an implementation strategy to adopt Agile into our organization. I would highly recommend him to any organization wishing to adopt and further evolve their adoption of Agile.
- Mark VekslerDirector of Engineering, VFA
In our short consulting session, Gil demonstrated a real talent in understanding people, their motivation and needs, giving valuable feedback and recommendations.
- Shirit Shachak SibonyQA manager, Oracle Israel
Gil consistently demonstrated creative, expert and empathetic advice, observation and leadership consistent with an approach of high integrity. He brought an appropriate mix of IT expertise, behaviour observations, lean process thinking and ability to start tough conversations to our team.
- Jason KoulourasDirector, Data Services
I engaged Gil to assess and coach three of my Agile development teams, ranging from novice to experienced. His recommendations were pragmatic yet fresh, and resulted in meaningful team performance improvements in each case, particularly around collaboration.
- Darryl MinardSenior manager, Portfolio Analytics Systems
With the perspective of time I am confident in recommending Gil's consulting service to anyone who wants to get a deeper understanding and richer benefits out of working in an Agile way.
- Guy NachimsonDirector of Israel R&D, Software AG
We had an extended retrospective with Gil. It was inspiring and exciting to see the entire team participate; Gil got us listening, thinking and asking questions more than ever before. This workshop ignited a flame of improvement enthusiasm in us.
- Racheli NehemiaR&D manager, BMC
Gil helped us understand why we needed a change and what values, principles, and models aligned to our strategy. He's instilled an Agile mindset in our team, which functions a lot better now, is more engaged, and executes much more effectively.
- Kevin LuoSenior development manager, Scotiabank