About me

I am an Agile Coach, Change Agent and Delivery Consultant working on Agile and DevOps transformation programmes in the public and private sectors. I deliver complex projects, products and digital services to customers and users. I help organisations achieve their desired outcomes and strategic objectives using a variety of Agile, Lean and DevOps principles.

I work with distributed and co-located cross-functional teams helping them become self-organising, autonomous and empowered so that they can deliver value to their customers or users more quickly. I lead teams through the agile service delivery lifecycle Discovery – Alpha – Beta – Live.

I influence senior stakeholders, show what good looks like and facilitate the process of planning, creating roadmaps, providing clarity and priority to the delivery teams. As part of transformation, my mission is to transform not only the IT department but the whole end-to-end value delivery starting from a concept to delivering value to customers/users.

Public sector

I am a former UK civil servant supporting a cross-government digital transformation programme across Central Government departments.

I use GDS principles and frameworks (Service Standard, Technology Code of Practice, Service Design Principles) and Central Government practices including the agile service life cycle, digital services assurance model, spend control and Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) framework.

At the Government Digital Service (Cabinet Office) I focused on building the agile capability within the delivery teams. I delivered Agile training and coaching sessions for Agile delivery community and civil servants  I also mentored Associate Delivery Managers in agile ways of working.

Other industries

My experience includes the following areas: online media, publishing, finance, healthcare, automotive, retail, travel, government, technology.

Community of Practice

I believe Communities of Practice connect people so I’ve created Agile Community of Practice to connect people with the same passion who can share their experiences, learn new skills and develop their subject matter expertise.

I  co-organise regular Agile events within the Agnostic Agile meet-up group (5150 members) whose mission is to share information and knowledge focused on being and doing Agile from the delivery, project management and transformation perspective.

I am a proud supporter of the Agnostic Agile movement which states ‘one size does not fit all’ and there is no one Agile framework fitting all organisations or teams but it depends on the context and a wider organisation’s strategy. Therefore, I always adapt and tailor agility to the company I work for and the teams.

Teams

I’m an Agile evangelist with an extensive track record of leading agile teams and organisations in their transformation journey.

I’ve worked with the delivery teams across multiple time zones and cultures including roles: Client Engagement Managers, Product Design (UX/UI), Digital and Interaction Designers, Business Analysts, User Researchers, Content Designers, Service Designers, Front-end and Back-end Developers, QA and DevOps engineers.

When working on transformation programmes, I work with senior leadership teams, senior civil servants and produce a backlog of transformation activities (People, Process, Technology).

Agile Training & Certifications

Scrum Master at Scrum Alliance
Kanban Management Professional (KMP1 and KMP2) at Kanban University
Change practitioner at PROSCI Change Management
Lean Foundations
Enterprise Agile: Growing Scrum
Project Management Foundations: Change
Cert Prep: PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)

Skills

Managing Product Backlog
Product Vision, Mission, Goals
Product Ownership
Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Writing user stories, acceptance criteria
Defining Definition of Ready, Definition of Done
Facilitating Agile ‘ceremonies’: daily stand-ups, sprint planning, sprint reviews, demos, retrospectives
Agile planning, roadmapping, OKR’s
Team velocity, efficiency, burn-down/up metrics
Business metrics and success criteria
Production metrics and DevOps capability success measures
Building motivated and high-performing teams
Skills and competencies matrix/framework
Performance management
User-centred approach & Application of design pattern principles
Agile service delivery lifecycle (Discovery-Alpha-eta-Live)
Gathering requirements and user research
Business analysis and value stream mapping
Design thinking
Agile Governance in complex and highly-compliant environments
Digitising Government
Business value and outcome oriented facilitation
Senior stakeholder management and coaching
Budgeting, Reporting, Risk Management
Change management and transformation
Making data and evidence driven decisions
Training, Facilitation and Enabling through coaching

Other learning:

I also attend agile conferences, meet-ups and workshops in London which include for example:

Growth Mindset: Think Your Way To Success with Chris Davies
Staying Curious with Clean Language with Damian Crawford
Got The Perfect Agile Model?
Here’s What You Should Know About Agnostic Agile with Sam Zawadi
Driving Digital Change & Progressive Web Apps with Adobe, Enonic and Next Step
Moving Towards Teal with Ash Sheikh
Agile: The entrepreneur’s perspective With Dan Rogers
Agile PMO:
The PMO has the power to support your organisation’s­ revolution with Dean Latchana
Business Agility: Stay Relevant with Arie van Bennekum, Melanie Franklin, Kelly Waters
Agile Leadership with Chris Davies
The Art of Transformation with Richard Atherton
The Lean ToolKit: Practical Practices for Continuous Improvement with Jon Terry
Will scaling work for you? A gentle introduction to SAFe with Mark Jeckells
How to achieve success with Lean-Agile in Transformation with Aimia
All About Agile with Kelly Waters
AgileExpo – The Agile Enterprise with Unicom
SAFe City Simulation
Understanding Principles of Product Development Flow with Mark Jeckells
Agile Estimating & Planning Workshop With Kelly Waters and Zane Gambasin
Adopting Agile as a Cultural Change with Melanie Franklin
Scientific thinking (KATA) for agile teams with Andrea Darabos
Introduction to Cynefin – with Liz Keogh
Cultivating a feedback culture in your organization – Carlo & Manuele (ASOS)
Scrum Event & Dave Snowden present – Pre-Scrum techniques and the state of Agile
John Mcfayden (CEC) Understanding options: Enterprise Scrum a language of Choice
Eben Halford: 5 Rules for Unlocking Team Potential