Financial Services
We were founded in 2008 as Software WithStyle and subsequently Scrum WithStyle by Rowan Bunning – a pioneer of Agile methods such as eXtreme Programming and Scrum in Australia since 2001.
We aim to leave you with a lasting ability to own your own decisions about how you work in a way that is aligned with both Agile principles and your strategic capability goals.
With our consulting, we pride ourselves on:
- being relentlessly focused on your improvement goals,
- never endorsing compromise states as the final destination, and
- providing independent advice, free from commercial incentives with other parties.
With our training, we pride ourselves on:
- exceeding your quality expectations, and
- always aligning our definitions with authoritative sources.
We have delivered well over 500 training courses offering accreditation with the gold standard in Agile professional development: Scrum Alliance.
We were the first Australian provider of Certified Scrum Product Owner training and the first to offer the entire Path to CSP (Certified Scrum Professional) for Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches.
Independant Advice.
You are faced with many options as to your way of working. Many consultancies have commercial and business model-based incentives around particular methods, processes and even tools. Being free from such incentives allows us to do what’s best for your interests, not ours.
The agenda of many consultancies is to sell you their preferred solution. We are not in the selling game, we are in the understanding game.
“If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.”
- Zig Ziglar
Outcome Focused.
Agile, just like any other way of working, should never be the goal. Despite that, we frequently encounter organisations where the dominant focus is how to “do Agile” or a specific framework rather than the ends to be achieved from such enablers.
We also find many transformation efforts have vague, feel-good platitudes as goals rather than outcomes genuinely born out of the business strategy and related capability needs.
Without an aspirational improvement vision, you cannot expect a culture of continuous improvement. Without specifics you will not have alignment of improvement decisions. Without measures, you will be able to tell which changes are actually making things better and which are making it worse.
This is why step #1 of any consulting engagement is to clarify your vision and define outcomes that go well beyond any framework or even Agile.
Depth of experience.
Our experience with agile methods spans over 23 years in both Australia and Europe. Our managing principal has worked as an Agile Coach with one of Europe’s leading agile consultancies as well as a wide variety of organisations in Australia.
Industries that we have worked with include:
Agile frameworks that we have guided implementation of include:
Beyond Projects.
A major theme in our work is guiding transitions beyond the many limitations of temporary programs and projects. The “project problem” often occurs when projects are over-applied to long-lived assets that can be continuously enhanced for optimal business results. If your organisation has difficulties with dependencies, coordinating narrow specialists, knowledge loss or lack of ownership then you may be experiencing the project problem.
Alternatives to organising around programs and projects include long lived product development (e.g. using Scrum without strong product management) and service delivery organisations (e.g. using Kanban).
If you believe that your leaders could benefit from insights about the limitations of projects and how they can benefit from an alternative operating mode, we offer a free executive briefing session on this. Please contact us to discuss arranging this.