My experience over twenty-five years in IT has taught me Agile may look simple on paper, but implementing it is not. One reason is because at its heart is about empowerment, it values individuals and interactions over processes and tools (Agile Manifesto). And yet, too many organizations, in their zeal to to implement an “Agile transformation”, mandate that staff will therein adopt a set of Agile practices. It is one thing when this irony is lost on this decision-makers with authority to embark on a transformation, but have limited knowledge of Agile. It is, however, another thing, altogether, when it is lost on the so-called Agile experts entrusted with educating, guiding, and leading transformations on the ground.

I don’t tell people how to do their jobs, and I certainly don’t recommending implementing heavy-weight scaled Agile frameworks that ignore fundamental principles of organizational design. Rather, I apply organizational design principles to fix the foundational systems of the organizational operating model, i.e., structure, budgeting, resource-governance, culture, methods and tools, and metrics and rewards.

I don’t replace them, and I don’t add a secondary operating system as some scaled Agile frameworks do. I fix the existing the ones so they achieve their intended purposes. I do so by creating an entrepreneurial organization based on the principles of market economics, an organization made up of businesses within the business, with a flexible, dynamic, decentralized team formation process fulfills the seventh principle behind the Agile Manifesto: The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.

How I Got Here

After college, I taught English and coached soccer, squash, and lacrosse for ten years after college. I received an MA in English from Middlebury College with graduate work at Oxford University. My approach to teaching and coaching was based on empowerment, on empowering them to think and write critically by showing them how I did it, and to win games and matches by collaboratively meeting the challenge at hand, not by listening for me to tell them what to do.

In 2000, I began a twenty-five year career in IT by learning how to program. While I enjoyed specializing in project management and service delivery, when I discovered Scrum in 2011, I knew I had found my calling.

Scrum immediately struck me as something new and important, for it explicitly defined the accountabilities and matching authorities for the two fundamental parties in the business of software development: the customer and the provider. In short, it empowered them. And when people are properly empowered, great things happen.

I received Scrum Master training from Jeff Sutherland, co-founder of Scrum, and immediately began teaching it in my project management course. I coached the Product Owner for the company’s POS system, and building on that success, within a year the company was an Agile Project Office with six full-time 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.