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What was your best day as an Agile consultant?

Join Martin Hinshelwood as he shares his most impactful day as an agile consultant, highlighting the power of inspired teams in agile environments.

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What was your best day as an Agile consultant?

The Game Changer

I’ve had many great experiences as an Agile Consultant, so writing about my ‘best day’ isn’t so easy.  It’s a tough one to pinpoint!

But if I think about it, one time really stands out above the rest, and it happened about seven years after the engagement.🕰️

I know that’s quite a long time ago, but that emphasises how this event has stuck with me throughout my years in Agile.  🔥

So, let me go ahead and share one of my most memorable moments as an Agile Consultant, which may sound like an average day at the office, but it turned out to be anything but. 💭

A Step Back in Time

So, picture this: I’m in Utah, a pretty picturesque landscape as the backdrop for our intense Scrum sessions.

There I was, deep in training and workshops with a spirited team of Java developers.  Despite my lack of Java expertise, I didn’t know anything about Java, but I was ready for the challenge, ready to make a difference. 💥

We pushed the boundaries of what we knew, diving headfirst into Scrum, Agile, user story workshops, and even engineering practices workshops.  In a spirited exchange of ideas, we even tackled a TDD explanation and lesson.

You can imagine the room was alive with the sound of keyboards and minds at work.  I think that this alone is a testament to the power of agile methodologies.

An Email Changed Everything

Now, I know you may be thinking that my memory of that day working in Utah sounds like just another day in the life of an Agile consultant.  But here’s where it gets interesting.  Seven years later, after the engagement with the Java development team, I got an email from one of the workshop participants out of the blue!

Receiving that email truly made my day. 📧 

This team member reached out to share the game-changing impact our time together had on him, his team, and their entire organisation.  He wrote to let me know what a game-changer that experience was.  It wasn’t just a one-off for him - the whole team and organisation had been impacted.💥

First APS Class

I thought a run-of-the-mill five to six-day on-site Scrum was a catalyst for massive change within that organisation. 🙌

During that engagement, we did Scrum and Agile workshops, worked on user stories, and even corrected my code on the projector, nonetheless! 😅

Even years later, people from that Scrum speak of it as a turning point.  Some have even invited me into their new companies to recreate that magic.

But funnily enough, that first experience, the first APS class I ever taught, remains unmatched in my memory.🏆

But the true magic was seeing the long-term ripple effects of that short engagement. 🚀

Your Turn to Transform

Are you ready to experience the transformative power of Agile?

Explore our Agile and Scrum courses.  Because, who knows, it might just be the catalyst your team needs for a monumental change! 🙌

Keywords:       Agile consulting, Scrum, transformative learning, catalyst for change         

Hashtags:        #AgileConsulting #BestDay #Scrum #AgileTransformation

I think my best day as an agile consultant is difficult to answer so I’m going to answer it in two different ways. My most memorable moment as an agile consultant actually happened about seven years after the engagement that it pertained to.

So I did an engagement in Utah where we did some training and workshops and consulting with a team of Java developers. At the time, I know nothing about Java but Java developers. I mean, I thought it went well. We helped them understand Scrum, we helped them understand agile, we did some user story workshops, we did some engineering practices workshops. I actually did a TDD explanation and lesson, and we did a TDD kata together even though I was writing in .NET because I know nothing about Java and they were writing in Java, and they were still correcting my code on the projector.

But about seven years later, I got an email from one of the participants of that engagement just to let me know how much of a game changer that experience was for him, his team, and the organisation. That experience, I think I was only on site for five or six days, but that experience for them felt like a catalyst for so much change inside the organisation.

I still speak to people that are from that engagement and hear from them on occasion, and they always talk about it in that way. I’ve even done gigs for people that have left and gone to other companies, and they’ve asked me to come in, but kind of nothing’s compared to that one, which is funnily enough, that was the first APS class I ever taught, which was a lot of fun.

Thanks for watching the video. If you enjoyed it, please like, follow, and subscribe. I always reply to comments, and if you want to have a chat about this or anything else agile, Scrum, or DevOps, then please book a coffee with me through Naked Agility.

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