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DLC, Northampton

Scrum Training and Agile Coach Services

Webgate were asked to provide a two-day Scrum course for DLC, a company that were newly adopting Scrum. Derek delivered our hugely popular, interactive, non-technical course. This course has students practice Scrum using Lego as a tool for building a product. Student comments on the feedback forms included:

It felt comfortable & at ease so everyone participated. Plenty of interaction, v. clear & concise. Course material made retention of the subject matter easier. Healthy debate was good. I thoroughly enjoyed the course

– Helen C

Educational, fun, good levels of theory and practice. Would recommend to others

– Paul M

Learning Scrum using the Scrum methodology helps us experience what we need to do. Much better than sitting through hundreds of slides. I think the use of Lego was a good idea to get non developers experience of the development team

– Andy M

Overall, attendees rated the course a 9.5 out of a possible 10. In fact, the success of the training led to Derek being asked to provide on-site Agile Coach services.

For a period of seven weeks, Derek helped DLC to apply Scrum as effectively as possible. He provided additional training in areas such as estimation, product backlog management, self-organization, reporting and Agile techniques, to name a few.

He also helped to spread the word about Scrum across the entire organisation running Scrum primer training courses and by having regular contact with the CFO and senior managers at dlc. This level of senior executive engagement is vital in making Scrum adoptions successful. The outcome is best expressed by Brennan, a Technical Architect employed at DLC:

Its simple – without Derek, our attempt to introduce Scrum would have failed. If you are thinking about using Scrum and you have challenging requirements and even more challenging team members, then getting a Derek to walk you through the ‘spasm’ of adopting Scrum is essential! Besides all that he is a great guy too!

Dunelm Mill, Leicester

Provided Scrum Training and Agile Coach Services

Derek was contracted by Tryzens, a UK based software services company, to help them understand and adopt Scrum. This was a pre-cursor to helping Tryzens to implement an eCommerce system for Dunelm Mill, a UK based soft furnishings retailer.

Derek presented a two-hour ‘Introduction to Scrum’ course at Tryzens’ offices in London. The presentation was well attended by all levels of staff from developers to directors. Feedback from attendees included:

Interactive. Slides concise and colourful (not dull). Trainer very knowledgeable and open to complex or specific questions

-Laura T

I liked the open question forum and coaching approach as the session was very useful in fully covering topics raised.

 

This then led to a Scrum course for some of the developers that would be working with Dunelm Mill. Feedback included:

I liked the whole content of Scrum and its explanation. This is the first framework I’ve had wholly explained to me. Lego is a great example!

-Sean D

There then followed a period of work as an Agile Coach at Dunelm Mill where Derek would regularly work with senior managers, including attendance at board meetings with the CEO, CFO and other senior managers, to address any Scrum related queries.

A fundamental part of the early work was to help the eCommerce team create a Product Vision. This was then used to help both the Dunelm management team and the Scrum Teams in deciding what functionality was needed in the product. Regular meetings were held at senior director level to assist in the adoption of Scrum across the company.

Derek also provided more Scrum training across the company as well as Agile Coaching and Scrum Master services across the Scrum teams. Comments from senior managers at both Dunelm Mill and Tryzens include:

Derek is a fantastic enabler of effective change through his coaching on a wide range of Agile techniques. His personable and engaging style allows process and cultural change needs to be smoothly and effectively brought about across a range of people and functions.

– Jon Davis, Head of Multi-Channel Transformation

I had the pleasure of working with Derek whilst setting up a team to deliver within an agile framework. Derek is an excellent and knowledgeable agile coach and has a friendly and engaging style. Derek ran several training sessions aimed at educating the team on agile and scrum best practice and feedback from all attendees was overwhelmingly positive

– Dan Fountain, Project Delivery Director

Derek was a pleasure to work with and a consummate professional. He is an excellent Agile coach and Consultant and has the ability to apply his Agile methods in a practical way to help businesses to gain the maximum benefit from an Agile approach.Derek is also an excellent teacher and ran several courses for us to help educate the team on the Agile method. Both his teaching and coaching style earned him great respect from the team and client as a trusted and capable Agile consultant

-Ken Konsein, Professional Services Director

asos.com, London

Provide Agile Coach and Scrum Master Services

asos.com are the UK’s largest independent online eCommerce fashion retailer. During 2012 they started a significant transformation towards adopting Scrum and Agile software practices. Derek was originally engaged as a technical agile coach to help the software teams adopt agile techniques. However, at that time, asos.com had greater need of a Scrum Master and so Derek began work as a Scrum Master for a newly formed Scrum team and as an Agile Coach for the organization as a whole.

This work presented considerable challenges, especially as Derek was also now responsible for coaching the permanent Scrum Masters employed by asos.com.  The effects of this work are best expressed by the people he worked with:

I value extremely highly the four months that I’ve worked with Derek at Asos.com. He’s always been approachable, helpful and honest.He has readily offered consistently thoughtful advice on a range of real world issues and challenges that I’ve faced whilst getting to grips with a new team. He is very easy to talk to and has helped me take a step back to approach problems from a different perspective.

His insight and experience has added real value to me as a Scrum Master and I look forward to continuing to benefit from his expertise in the future.

– Adrian Pottier

Derek is friendly, approachable and knowledgeable.Derek did a fantastic job of coaching and helping others in the teams. Pleasure to work with and bounce ideas with, not afraid to challenge the norm and he embodies Agile principles. In short he is an excellent coach.

– Ali Asl

I found working with Derek to be a pleasure. He is friendly, approachable and keen to give well thought out, knowledgeable, feedback.Derek does a good job of challenging your opinions, ideas and beliefs without forcing his own upon you. All in all he is an excellent coach

– Duncan Smith

As well as coaching other Scrum Masters, Derek worked with his own newly formed Scrum team. Again, the results of this work are best expressed by a member of the team:

Working with Derek the last few months has yielded my first positive experience of Scrum, we have gone from a relatively disorganised group of developers to a self organising and (relatively) predictable agile team.Derek’s knowledge of Scrum and agile principles in general is second to none, he absolutely gets the balance right as a Scrum Master, hands off enough for us to learn from our mistakes but involved enough to always guide us in the right direction, additionally Derek’s guidance is always well qualified with explanations which demonstrate his extensive experience.

On a personal level Derek is a pleasure to work with

– Nick Champion

As well as achieving great results with Scrum Masters and Scrum Teams, Derek also earned praise from his peers for his work:

Derek is a fantastic agile coach. He is especially good at listening and observing, then reflecting the information back with added knowledge and advice.He has a deep and thorough understanding of Scrum in particular but is always seeking to learn from the people around him and new experiences to improve himself in Scrum and other agile practices & techniques

– Dan Brown, Accredited Kanban Coach with LKU

Derek has great observation skills, he has a wonderful ability to understand what isn’t working very well and be able to articulate that message to clients.Derek is then able to work with the client to help them improve the way they work. Derek is a good trainer, able to respond to the needs of delegates. He also has a lot of experience to be able to rely upon, to answer questions and steer peoples learning

– Mark Summers, Certified Scrum Trainer and Certified Scrum Coach

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