Randy supported me as an Agile Enterprise Coach in the implementation of our Technology Products organization. He was instrumental in implement our Agile Portfolio Management and Scaled Agile practices. He coached my Product Managers and Product Owners towards developing their Agile skills. Randy was a key mentor for me and a great sounding board for the ideas and solutions I faced each week.
I was privileged to get the opportunity with Samar at Fanatics, where I was Scrum Master to several Infrastructure workstreams. Samar took the challenge of guiding and coaching our entire Infrastructure organization (including Leadership) while we were struggling in our Agile transformation. Her charismatic personality blended with her outstanding leadership skills fit perfectly as our Enterprise Agile Coach. Under her leadership she not only taught us when it might be appropriate to apply various Agile techniques (such as Scrum, Scrumban, Kanban, etc.), but she also established accountability among the team members, resulting in higher performance and an increase in business value being delivered on a consistent basis. She taught us to be creative, empowering teams to self-organize and do anything that works for that particular team in order to be successful. It is just amazing to witness Samar’s ability to coach executives and get them to help drive Agile adoption downward within their own organization as well as across the Enterprise. I welcome the next opportunity I have to work with such an accomplished professional!
I know as the President of Agile Transformation, you probably constantly receive positive feedback. However, I feel Roger’s recent efforts deserve a special shout out. As I am sure you know, last week we had a JumpStart (2- day Training/1- day Quarterly Planning) for our third LBA Pilot. While it wasn’t the perfect event I dreamed it would be, it was as we like to say “roughly right.” It was the very first LBA (Lean Business Agility) event that I, Eva the Agile Newbie, was in charge of leading. Regardless of the hours of work I put in for preparation, I was nervous and anxious.
While everyone has praised my JumpStart debut as a success, I know the event would never have been such a success without Roger’s large efforts. Roger’s coaching and help in the last two weeks were literally the legs I needed to stand on to lead this session. He went through the deck with me more times than I could count, and he practiced speaking points with me even more times than that. More importantly, Roger was not just worried about my speaking points, but that I actually understood the content that I was presenting. We practiced days before, hours before, and even on breaks during the workshop. He also was there to support me the weekend prior (during his precious and rare time with his family). The week of the JumpStart, he put in many late nights, and always with one goal in mind, making sure that Tracy and I were confident and ready to lead the next day. He also was very helpful in jumping into the session when we cued him for backup. However, there were so many moments I felt myself saying some of Roger’s words and hoping to do it justice, only to see him smiling and giving me a reassuring thumbs up from the back of the room. I am extremely grateful for these efforts, and while I have communicated them with my leadership team, I wanted to be sure to communicate them with his leadership team as well.
I now feel confident that I could independently deliver a 2-day LBA training, and co-facilitate a quarterly planning. I know it’s probably small potatoes to agile experts, but I feel that is HUGE for someone who didn’t know what agile was this time last year! While I did independently work very hard to get to this point, I know I wouldn’t be here without Roger’s help and guidance. Like any team, I think Roger and I formed, stormed, and normed and I think we are now even getting to performing. Check us out! I know there will come a day when I look back and reflect on my Agile journey, and I will definitely remember Verizon and Roger as my foundation. Thank you.
NextGear Capital’s Technology organization is unique in that it is less than 3 years old. We have hired more than 200 team members into the technology group during this time and have a mission to adopt lean and agile thinking as part of our Technology team’s vision.
In previous organizations, my experience with agile transformation involved replacing an existing set of practices. At NextGear Capital, we were building our agile practices in a “green field” way. Finding an agile coach with this kind of experience was a prerequisite. Working through an established agile network, we engaged Randy to help with our implementation.
Randy was instrumental in helping to shape our organization in many ways. Working at all levels (senior, mid-level and team), he helped create and develop our agile thinking and focus our attention to delivering value to our business stakeholders. His knowledge, energy and passion were instrumental in helping NextGear Capital create a agile technology organization.
Randy possesses a strong set of skills and understands all aspects of organizational change. He is thorough in his approach and willing to engage at any level to ensure team and organizational success.
Sally and her team have provided STRATA with some superb Agile
training and coaching. I highly recommend Agile Transformations. I
can’t think of a better way to say this…Their work over the last year
was transformative.
Agile Transformations was brought in to help us improve our product development process through Lean Product Development and Lean Business Agility. This has been a wild success and is allowing us to completely revamp our process and improve our speed to market. The concepts used that were Agile related have spread like wildfire in our organization and is now used in some form in almost every functional area. I would highly recommend Agile Transformations to any business, its not just for IT anymore.
ATI has been instrumental in our transformation journey thus far. Sally and her team have been incredible partners in numerous aspects of coaching; including adaptive leadership, agility health, 1 on 1, and facilitation. They bring a passion and energy to every engagement that is unique, and a personal commitment to the customer that really differentiates them from other industry service models. To say that my experience with them has been ‘invaluable’, would be an understatement.
If you’re looking for a holistic approach to changing your organization to adopt Agile methodologies you should look no further. ATI has been successful at coaching many of our teams to adopt Agile and they have done so by training teams on methodologies, team leadership and how each role fits into the big picture all the way to training the leadership of the organization on strategic thinking. ATI has deployed coaches that have real world experience building and leading teams that are invaluable to us along this journey. Our journey was accelerated significantly by using ATI.
In 2016 Cox Automotive has broadened their use of AgilityHealth in the enterprise and we now have about 45 AHFs and 140 delivery teams set up in the system with more to come as newly minted AHFs start rolling out AgilityHealth further within DealerTrack.
As quite a few new coaches just got certified, AgilityHealth continues to be brought up in the Enterprise Agility group and the coaches are thinking about how to leverage AgilityHealth to understand team health and how it can be used to guide coaching engagements as well as transformation work.
From one of our coaches: “I partnered with our AgilityHealth champion to review open Organizational Growth Items with appropriate team members across the Portfolio, Program and Delivery team levels to successfully influence resolution and closure of five (5) organizational impediments. A majority of the resolved organizational impediments were related to increasing team stability as well as communication and gathering affected team input when team member changes were planned.
Measured business outcomes from the monthly business review have shown the capacity churn rate has dropped approximately in half from its high (20%) in February through August (the most recent measurement) while Feature time to market has also decreased by over 25% from January (15.8 weeks) through August (11.6 weeks)”
Working with the Agile Transformation has as always been fun. The team has been very responsive and, especially when it comes to issues or urgent requests, been able to turn things around very quickly, often in a day or less.
Customer Advisor | Business Development Leader
Trisha has over 20 years of experience across several industries, including health care, manufacturing and distribution, and finance. She holds an AgilityHealth Facilitator Certification and is an Emergenetics Associate. As our Customer Advisor who listens closely to our clients’ needs and objectives, then helps them identify targeted solutions to meet their goals. Trisha’s definition of ‘Done’ is when we’ve delivered ‘WOW’ and exceeded our clients expectations with the value received from our engagement! She’s a trusted partner through the transformation journey until success is achieved.
Fun Fact: Trish and her husband throw a great HALLoween party every year!
Customer Success Coordinator
Tim is the connector, he makes meetings happen, and gets you lined up with whatever information you need to proceed with our AgilityHealth Growth & Assessment Tools. Tim has extensive experience in business development, marketing and team growth strategies. Tim graduated PSU School of Business in the Honors Program, and loves helping anyone in need of assistance.
Fun Facts: Tim loves Central & South America and usually can be found working remotely from Nicaragua, Bolivia, Peru, Panama and Guatemala, though doesn’t speak much Spanish.
Fulfillment Specialist | AgileVideos.com Support
Dave came to Agile Transformation from a background in logistics and transportation. He currently provides customer support for AgileVideos.com, coordinates fulfillment of training materials, and assists our Finance Leader with billing.
Fun Facts: Dave loves college football (go Irish!), baseball, WWII history and traveling. He is married and has two children and two dogs.
Business Analyst & Customer Success Manager for AgilityHealth
Kyle joined Agile Transformation in 2016 and works with Georgia and our development team on the AgilityHealth Assessment tool. Kyle also assists our clients by providing feature updates, troubleshooting issues, and administering demos of the agility health tool to interested parties.
Fun Facts: Kyle loves going to the movies. He likes to be the first to see all the new releases and his favorite genre is action-comedy!
AgilityHealth Product Strategist
René is passionate about Agile and helping teams get healthier and more productive. He is focused on product strategy and delivery for AgiltyHealth and allowing this product reach its fullest potential. His background includes roles in development, consulting, project management and enterprise agility. He grew up in Germany and now lives in Southern CA. René is PMP, PMI ACP, AHF and SPC 4.
Fun Facts: René is an exercise fanatic and loves running, Tae Kwon Do, tennis, hiking, scuba diving and various other outdoor adventures. He also enjoys traveling with his wife and son.
