Most problems that slow teams down aren’t just process problems, or just technical problems, or just people problems — they’re all three at once. That’s why our engagements draw from all of these areas, combined as needed for your specific situation. Some coaching, some facilitation and some training.

Note that while we primary work on corporate engagements that block months at a time, we do make time slots available for individuals who need quicker assistance. Those individual time slots can be booked directly here.

Ask us how we can help.

Example: An engagement involving less than a dozen teams might look like this:

A few days of meeting with the teams in order to understand their current context.
Some structured training classes, targeting specific skills as identified in the first step
Multiple days of facilitated ensemble programming for each team. Note that the first session of ensemble work will be two consecutive days and subsequent ones are typically one day each. Only one team at a time in an ensemble session.
A longer period of ongoing coaching and mentoring.
- Observation and/or facilitation of existing planning, retrospectives, standups or other meetings.
- Assistance with probabilistic forecasting and/or metrics.
At the same time as the above, coaching the leadership of these teams, and helping them understand forecasting, motivation, psychological safety and many other topics. Leadership creates the container that everyone else works within, so changes here are often more impactful than changes anywhere else.

Facilitation

Effective facilitation is an important skill for your people. We can either teach your people how to facilitate or we can do the facilitation ourselves to model the behaviour you’d like to see.

The expertise that a facilitator brings to an activity or meeting can often make or break the effectiveness of that activity. There are certain skills that are generally applicable for any facilitation and then there are specialized skills to facilitate specific kinds of activities such as mob programming or open spaces.

Mob programming, in particular, is one activity that we are often asked to help with. We’ve facilitated mobbing sessions with hundreds of different teams and can bring that expertise to your company.

Coaching / Mentoring

While coaching and mentoring are very distinct disciplines, in the context of “agile coaching”, they tend to flow fluidly from one to the other. Despite the misleading name, what is often referred to as “agile coaching” is usually more on the mentoring side, helping people understand and adopt specific practices.

We are experienced with both which allows us to use whichever is more appropriate in the moment.

Training

Our trainings tend to be deeply experiential, focusing on those approaches that science has shown to be most effective in helping people learn. Our attendees will learn through doing, not just by listening.

While we do have some standard classes that we are always offering, most of the trainings we do are customized for our clients. Do you need two days of technical training or a one day introduction to Kanban? We can accommodate your needs.

While most courses are customized, there are certain things that are very frequently covered in our classes.

If you would rather take one of our publicly offered classes then refer to the main page for upcoming ones.

Typical content for an Agile introduction

Agile history - where did this all come from?
The values and principles.
Understanding the context - where Agile is the right fit and where it isn’t.
The different methods and where they make sense (ie Scrum, Kanban, others).
Understanding scaling of agile - what problem is scaling trying to solve and how does it do that?
Understanding where management fits in the agile picture and how they can best support the effort.

Typical content for a Kanban introduction

Flow basics. Understanding effectiveness vs utilization and basic queuing theory.
The core practices.
Board and policy definitions. In a shorter class, we may only cover how this would be done, while in a longer workshop, we will actually define all of these with the group.
Metrics (i.e. lead time, cycle time) and charts (i.e. cumulative flow diagram, lead time distribution).

Typical content for a Scrum introduction

Understanding the timebox and the product increment.
The various meetings and the intent behind each.
The three roles that Scrum defines and the one that it ignores.
The artifacts.
The sprint and product goals.
Metrics: Velocity, burndown charts, etc.

Typical content on stories and work breakdown

Personas and story mapping
Writing and slicing stories effectively.
User stories and job stories - how they’re different and when you might want to use each.
Prioritization techniques such as the Kano model and Cost of Delay.
Estimation techniques.
Acceptance criteria and the gherkin notation.

Typical content for Agile technical skills training

Test Driven Development (TDD).
Pair and Mob Programming - techniques for increased collaboration.
Simple Design.
Technical Debt.
Refactoring.
Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)
Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) / Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD).

Testimonials

”Mike consulted at The Weather Network, and in a very short time, he completely changed our Agile practices. He made us better at Agile, closer as teams, and far more productive. Mike is a rare combination of smart, competent and pragmatic.”

— Fernando Toro, Manager of Apps & Web, Pelmorex (The Weather Network)

”Mike helps individuals be better individuals, teams be better teams, and coerces products to be better products. He helps people collaborate and deliver together, and where collaboration is lacking, Mike levels up the individuals and makes them better.”

— Steven Baker, Software Developer, SUSE

”His depth of technical acumen is balanced with an exceptional appreciation and understanding of human interaction.”

— Jeff Kosciejew, Management Consultant and Agile Coach

”In an industry where group think is rife, we need more Mikes — thoughtful educators who have the experience and conviction to challenge the status quo and get people thinking ‘there must be a better way’.”

— John Gallagher, Principal Engineer, Dynatrace