We understand uncertainty. It is our business to help your business achieve results in uncertain times. That is the point of agility. Trying to go faster or achieve better results in uncertain times is a lot like trying to drive fast in the fog. You certainly an do it, but we have to consider the risks and how we can mitigate them.
We all have to remember to remain calm. It is so hard to do that or even say it (I myself am guilty of not remaining calm at times). We typically make poor decisions when we are irrational or flustered. It is hard not to be during the current economic and health crisis. The best thing we can do is to ensure stability in our business and in our teams. We have to make tough decisions and evoke things we would never dream we would have to do, but if we want to remain in business, we have to take care of our clients and more importantly, the people serving our clients.
At Big Agile, we have had to adapt to this situation very rapidly. Necessity is the mother of invention and we are constantly looking for ways to re-invent ourselves to remain competitive and valuable. Every business is likely having to do the same. We are trying to practice what we teach; use empirical data and make decisions at the latest responsible moment (a lean concept). We are constantly evaluating the landscape to ensure our decisions are the most economical and provide the most value to our business and our clients. We will make mistakes, so will you. That is how we learn.
As such, we have had to prepare to make our content and courses (certification workshops and others) available in an online / remote setting. This is not a new thing to a lot of remote workers, but it is pretty new in our line of work. I am attending the Southern Methodist University (Dallas, TX) obtaining my Masters in Data Science. Our course is 100% online and it works well. I am convinced we can make this temporary (or even permanent) transition in our world and I have enjoyed having the last 1.5 years of the academic experience to help in making this transition.
There are also times in the business world when people need help, but the process of obtaining help is so cumbersome; they give up. Take a procurement process or approval process for spending money. On a typical engagement, we would work through all of those processes and the sales cycle could take months (some even a year). Naturally others are very quick. Our point at Big Agile is to always strive for minimal viable bureaucracy (minimal viable process, the true MVP).
If your teams need help, we want to make it as easy as possible. We are offering the flexibility of scheduling 1 hour sessions, online, directly on our own calendar with direct payment options for the hour long session. We are lowering the cost of our time as well to allow for a smooth approval process in your organization. We want to be flexible to meet you and your team's needs. This hopefully will allow teams some semblance of normal if they are able to receive coaching during this uncertain time (whether process improvements, team improvements, or even just the psychology of relationships within a team).
Most of our workshops that are public have transitioned to online workshops based on Scrum Alliance guidelines (meaning you can attend that OKC or DFW Certified Scrum Workshop even if you are in another state entirely because of the travel restrictions). We are also offering online/ad-hoc coaching. Follow the links below for more information about how to schedule time:
- Ad-hoc Online Coaching (1 hour increments)
- Current public workshops (moving to online on a case by case basis)
- If you attend an online workshop, you will be eligible to attend an in-person workshop (whenever we can offer those again) free of charge
Feel free to drop us a note as well, and we would be happy to dialogue on other ways we can look to help your teams become more efficient and agile-minded during this critical time in our economic history. We are all in this together and want to continue to serve in our current capacity as best we can.
