My experience over twenty-five years in IT as an Agile Coach and Organizational Design engineer has taught me Agile may look simple on paper, but implementing it is not.
For example, I have seen many transformations increase overhead instead of decreasing by implementing a heavy-weight scaled framework, and too many transformations disempower people instead of empower them.
I don’t tell people how to do their jobs, and I certainly don’t recommend implementing heavy-weight methodologies that ignore fundamental principles of organizational design.
Rather, I apply organizational design principles to fix the systems that surround and support Agile.
I don’t replace them, I repair them. The result is an
I create an organization of entrepreneurs based on the principles of market economics, an organization in which every group thinks and operates as a business-within-the-business.
And I create a flexible, dynamic, and decentralized, team formation process that marshals the right people at the right time in response changing priorities and demand. The result is true organizational agility.
How I Got Here
My first love was teaching English and coaching soccer, squash, and lacrosse in prep schools.
When I switched careers to IT in 2000, I brought my teaching and coaching experience with me. began a twenty-five year career in IT. I learned how to program, but specialized in organization design and service delivery.
When I discovered Scrum, I knew it was important.
I received Scrum Master training from Jeff Sutherland, co-founder of Scrum, and immediately began teaching and coaching Agile at Ticketnetwork in Vernon, CT. Within a year, we had an full-time Agile Program Office with seven certified Scrum Masters.
Ever since, I have been an Agile Coach to corporations in healthcare, banking, insurance, broadcasting, legal management, wireless network providers, online ticket resellers, and cybersecurity.
Over the years, however, I have found the essence of Agile was lost on many, including Agile experts. Too easily, these experts accepted whatever was hawked as Agile; and too often in their zeal to implement their Agile transformations, they followed the letter but not the spirit. Too often, without their even being aware of the irony, they valued processes and tools over individuals and interactions.
I have seen many Agile programs succeed, but many others fail, or at least fail to achieve their potential. Again and again, across every industry, the root causes have been poorly designed, or badly implemented, Agile programs, and (equally important) inattention the organizational systems on which Agile programs depend.
What sets me apart as the Agile Mechanic, is that I don’t implement Agile practices with scaled frameworks that ignore fundamental principles of organizational design. Rather, I apply leading thinking on organizational structure, resource-governance processes, culture, and metrics to frame Agile within a dynamic, entrepreneurial organization that uses a flexible, decentralized team formation process based on self-organization.
Before switching careers to IT, I taught English and coached a variety of sports for eleven years. My goal was always the same: to empower my students and athletes to succeed in life and on the field, and I had the luxury to decide how to do that. As an Agile Coach, my goal was to empower individuals and organizations to succeed in the workplace, and as the Agile Mechanic, I help leaders design organizations that empower them to decide how to do that.
In my spare time, I like winter backpacking, tennis, and being of service to others in a variety of ways.
Contact me if you would like to discussion your challenges.