I’m Cameron Leask,
an Agile Coach
Contact me to find out how I can help.
I’m an independent Enterprise Agile Coach,
and, like you, I’m focused on business outcomes
The Agile Manifesto talks about uncovering “better ways” of delivering.
For me, “better” includes finding new ways of working that are sustainable, enable higher quality, accelerate delivery and reduce cost.
Every organisation has its own unique challenges to delivering these as part of their Agile transformation journey,
but if we get it right, we’ll create a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement.
Sustainability
Agile approaches help to balance the capacity of the organisation with the flow of work being processed, making it easier to predict delivery with confidence.
Higher Quality
Agile ways of working help to ensure that teams across the organisation regularly take the time to consider how they work, and to find opportunities to improve.
Acceleration
Early and frequent delivery reduces risk and time to market, improving ROI & cashflow. This is the Agility that enables innovation and creativity in teams.
Reduced Costs
Whether you consider costs as waste, rework, financial costs, delays... reducing any of these increases the availability of productive delivery capacity.
My job, as an Enterprise Agile Coach,
is to enable your Agile Transformation journey
“…we value individuals and interactions over processes and tools…”
I enable Agile transformations by working with people at every level in the organisation.
The most common things I find missing are communication opportunities that allow feedback and contextual information to flow freely across the organisation.
working with
Delivery Teams
At the heart of every agile transformation are the delivery teams, whose job it is to actually get the work of the organisation done: they are the building blocks of Agile delivery.
Frequently these are “Scrum teams” in Agile organisations, although Scrum is just one of many ways of structuring and managing the flow of work through a team. Many of the teams I have worked with have been using Kanban, for example.
I focus on building Agile mindsets, and on helping teams to build good habits in their adoption of agile frameworks and ways of working.
working with
Portfolio & Programme Teams
In a perfect world each delivery team is autonomous and independent, but as organisations scale up, some orchestration is usually required to ensure that the work of the delivery teams is coordinated.
The flow of work through the organisation – the value stream – is typically controlled and regulated by portfolio and programme teams.
I focus on helping portfolio & programme teams build systemic agility into their processes to ensure that their processes are engineered to accommodate and enable change, operating in ways that allow the delivery teams to work effectively.
working with
Leadership Teams
In an Agile Transformation, the process of managing the flow of work from strategy to execution is what determines the organisational agility that can be achieved.
The critical role of leadership teams is in setting context and clear intent for their organisations, and in removing the dependencies that interrupt the flow of work through the organisation.
I focus on working with leadership teams to improve how they communicate strategy, and how they set the conditions in their organisations to ensure that the agile transformation can successfully deliver expected business benefits.
What does an Agile Coach do?
When I’m working with you, I’ll be switching frequently between all of these roles.
I bring a practitioner’s perspective to agile coaching – bringing practical experience to the matter at hand, engaging,
and helping the teams I work with understand and see the challenges and opportunities that they were previously unaware of.
Coaching
As an experienced Agile Coach I help individuals and teams to explore & achieve their goals
Facilitating
As an Agile change agent, my role is to make sure conversations happen effectively.
Consulting
As an experienced Agile consultant, I help clients set direction and design, deliver & support solutions
Mentoring
As an experienced Agile practitioner I give teams and individuals examples, guidance and support
Training
I'm an experienced Agile trainer with experience of delivering online as well as in-person
My background
I’m a certified Enterprise Agile Coach and Chartered Accountant with almost 30 years’ experience of leading and supporting teams.
I spent 10 years working with one of the largest global professional services businesses. During this time, I qualified as a Chartered Accountant, and went on to work on global ERP implementations and enterprise-scale software engineering projects. For a year I supported our development teams around the world as the Knowledge Manager for our Global Software Engineering Centre of Excellence.
In the following 16 years, I successfully established and ran my own software engineering business. We built software for 200+ clients in many different industry sectors. We were one of the first AWS partners in Europe. We built software following a waterfall model, until a talented Scrum Master helped me understand that there was a better way to work, and how to put Agile into practice.
I’m now a certified (ICE-EC) Enterprise Agile Coach, and I use my experience to help me guide individuals, teams, businesses, and their leaders to discover, explore and adopt Agile ways of working on their own Agile transformation journeys. In recent years I’ve worked with leaders and teams in the Financial Services, Electricity, Oil & Gas, and Water industries.
Client & colleague feedback
"You have very successfully and with enormous care seen the conversion of our team into a confident, can-do agile organisation of motivated and supportive team members."
Chairman
"I loved working with you. The Team Purpose session you ran with our [regional executive leadership team] will definitely stick forever with me."
Regional Leadership Advisor
"We joined [our one-day workshop] as a team, but we left as a family."
Senior Regional Leader
"It's really clear what we need to work on now, which is so much better than how the product managers used to try to work with us."
Senior Developer
Energy sector
"I found your webinar a really succinct introduction to Agile, and it resonated greatly with my world."
Head of Programme
"Thank you for your workshop sessions last week. The round-table discussions were really useful for our team and have given us lots to think about."
Programme Manager
"I really enjoyed working with you on this project – you have a wonderful wealth of knowledge, and the case studies you devised were super. I hope we get the opportunity to work together again."
Director
"[Cameron is] effective, trusted and confident in working at all levels from executive to front line. Takes a system-wide perspective that allows others to see bottlenecks and optimise the whole. Very strong in Kanban, in particular in helping teams apply the concepts to very novel environments, and creating links from squad execution to squad coordination to business unit portfolio and strategy. One of the handful of senior coaches who I'd hire in a heartbeat."
Regional agility coaching lead
Thank you for your continued contributions to our community of agility coaches. You share very useful content with us on a regular basis; your contributions to conversations are on-point and add a lot of value, both in group and 1-1 setting. You're respectful, and unafraid when mentioning hard truths, the ones we need to hear, even if others are silent about them or not aware. It is a continuing pleasure to work with you. Please keep up the good work!
Peer agility coach
"You are really helping us and our other coaches understand and shape how Kanban works and will benefit our region. It's so good having someone who is helping lead this in such a considered and clear way."
Regional agility coaching lead
"Thank you for your support of so many colleagues. It has been great working with you and you have left a fantastic legacy"
Corporate Services Director
Thank you again for all your hard work, attention and interest in working with our teams. It’s so good to see that teams are getting real benefit from the process – from an individual and organisational perspective.
L&D Director
"The positive difference you've made to our delivery teams is tangible, you can feel it as soon as you arrive"
CEO
“This is so much better than how we’ve worked with [our developers] in the past. Our visibility and understanding of the work in progress in our business is so much better. There are no hidden surprises!”
Sales Director
"The course was very informative and has helped us identify some important questions regarding how we can work better with colleagues in other teams"
In-house legal counsel
"Thank you for making [our Value Stream Mapping workshop] such a success. You have opened peoples' eyes to the potential solution to very chronic problem in our organisation. Thank you!"
Business Integration Manager
"You have great energy and a good blend of being proactive without being too directive. "
Peer agility coach
"I’m hoping we will again be blessed by the sensitive yet robust facilitation provided by ... Cameron"
Planning Team Leader
Can I help your organisation?
If you think I could help to enable or accelerate your Agile transformation,
or if you’d just like more information, please let me know.
We can set up a call and take it from there.
