Agile / Scrum

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Essence

A proficient agile leader in IT change possesses a multifaceted skill set that combines technical acumen with strong leadership qualities. They are adept at championing agile methodologies, ensuring that teams are aligned with organisational goals and capable of adapting to evolving project requirements. Proficiency in fostering a collaborative and transparent work culture is a key competence, as agile leaders empower cross-functional teams to self-organise, communicate openly, and collectively strive for continuous improvement. They excel at removing impediments, promoting a customer-centric focus, and instilling a mindset of experimentation and learning from both successes and failures.

Effective communication and relationship-building skills are central competences for agile leaders in IT change. They facilitate open dialogue, ensuring that stakeholders, team members, and other relevant parties are well-informed and engaged throughout the change process. Additionally, agile leaders exhibit strategic thinking, aligning IT initiatives with business objectives and guiding their teams to deliver value incrementally. Overall, their competences encompass a balance of technical expertise, leadership capabilities, and a commitment to fostering a dynamic and adaptive work environment that thrives on agile principles.

Experience

Even in highly controlled project environments (e.g. PRINCE2) I've always valued the inspect and adapt mantra of the agile manifesto. Also, the strong network of relationships has always been the key to removing impediments from issues raised, whether that's through checkpoint meetings or the daily scrum. The business culture, especially in financial services, in these first two decades of my career was skeptical of agile approaches, but it was a great experience at Macquarie who led the charge. For family reasons I moved back to the UK, but continued my agile journey self-funding a certification as a Scrum Master to be better prepared for the UK market.

In 2016 I joined BAE Systems and began to coach the application team agile practices. Demonstrating the value of time-boxed meetings combined with the retrospective soon changed the culture. It made meetings far more focused and productive.

In 2017 Rabobank were transitioning to a scaled agile framework so I fully adopted scrum as the delivery mechanism for the teams configuring the new core banking platform. This included supporting the Program Director by facilitating PI (Program Increment) planning events and system demonstrations.

More recently, in 2022 I ran a scrum team at Greencross to migrate their subscription engine on their flagship pet insurance product.

I've learned that one of the main flow indicators for good agile is DevOps. I made quite a career out of the hard wall that use to exist between development and operations, but it was necessary that this was torn down. A continuous delivery pipeline is essential to quickly bring business value to work performed. The culture of collaboration is so important in this area. It's worth the investment to establish a regular deployment cadence tied to the sprint. This includes automated regression tests, and constantly updating the suite of tests as features are created and modified.

Between contracts I've also certified as a SAFe™ 6 Agilist, and I'm keen to take the next step to become a practice consultant.

Credentials