I shared my personal journey and experience I gathered in 3 years of Agile Consulting. This talk was in Agile On Event (11 Aug 2018), in Agile Cockpit Gurgaon.

1. The Consultant
How does a consultant
Produce, Track
and Display results
to his/her client.
Deepti Jain
www.agilevirgin.in
www.agilitytoday.com
+91-999-902-8847
deeptijain@agilevirgin.in
https://in.linkedin.com/pub/deepti-jain/a/852/107

2. Right Client
 Select and Work with Right Client
 Understand what client wants
 Explain client what he is getting himself into
 Explain client what he will be expected to do
 Explain client how it works, and what you will do
 And if that’s not the case, then know how to deal with that situation
 See what best you can do
 Be Empathetic
 See how soon you can exit without causing yourself and client distress
Note: Mistakes teach more, so all mistakes are GOOD.

3. Exploration Workshop: Cherry pick Goals
 This workshop is done before accepting client, and results in following:
 Understanding of Client’s needs
 Proposing a few solutions to Client
 Explaining what client is getting himself into
 Explaining what client will be expected to do
 Explaining client how it works
 Explaining client what you will do
 Question is if this will be paid or not?
 It must be
 But not all Clients understand it’s importance
 If you can’t explain it’s importance to client,
do you want to bear the cost?
 How valuable is client
 How much you trust Client
 Your brand is most important

4. Getting Started with Transformation
 Connect and Assess
 Create Assessment Report and Initial Recommendation
 Review with Leadership, create Common Vision, Goal and
Execution Plan.
 Induce Agile Mindset and Framework Induction
 Expectation Setting Workshop
 Execute with due diligence

5. Connect and Assess
 Establish trust and connect between you and your
team(s)
 Start from “not knowing”
 Do the Assessment
 How are you? What do you want?
 What is your Team’s Goal, Vision? Where do you fit in?
 How do you add value to your team? What else ‘can
you’ / ‘you what to’ do?
 Why is this Agile Transformation happening?
 What does your team need, to be the best?
 What are Impediments?
 Create Team as well as Org Impediments list from
Team as well as Mgmt Perspective

6. Create Report, Recommend Plan and
Review with Leadership
 You don’t know anything, but for sure you have seen this and many of
such movies, and by now you are ready to share your observation, what’s
gonna happen next, and hence what you should be doing.
 Co-Create with Team.
 Review with Leadership, get their insights and
buy-in.
 Set Goals and Review Frequency.
Note: Your Plan includes items which are yet not clear, and so next two slides
are important. Make sure that you explained it to everyone.

7. Induction to Agile and Suitable
Frameworks and Tools
 Create Common Language, lead to common Mindset and Co-
create Common Culture.
 Following can be included in induction:
 Agile
 Implementation frameworks
 Scrum (mostly used framework)
 Kanban
 Agile Estimations
 Story Writing
 Do not over load with information

8. Expectation Setting Workshop
 You know what Procedure to follow, path may vary for each client,
but major milestones are same.
 Establish Vision, Goals and Milestone for your Plan with this
workshop. There are following major outcomes:
 Working Agreements
 Roles & Responsibilities
 Tools
 Reports
 And hence Team’s Goals for next 6 Sprints and success criteria.
 Spread it out wisely, you don’t want to burnout before finish line.

9. Execute with Courage, Smartness and
Transparency
 Courage to be Authentic, Unbiased, and a True Servant Leader.
 Be Sincere towards your work because you represent entire Agile Servant
Leader Community.
 Make as much information Transparent as possible.
 Give data to support your reports
 BUT MOST IMP: BE SMART (Smartly Courageous),
you do not want to rub people the wrong way.

10. Big Picture: System vs Component
 Optimise System as a whole, and not just
the components.
 Not many get to reach here. But if you are
Smart, you can enrol your client to let you
go there.
 In case you can not go there, do put that in
future Plan, help client see it.
 Help Client understand importance of CoP,
and establish one, so that when you leave,
your foot prints are still there.
 Inspire.

11. It’s better to Fadeaway then to Burnout
 Client Relationship is most important.
 Understand their capability to understand.
 We are not here to change the world, but do
whatever little betterment we can do.
 Not all fights are worth fighting.
 STAY NEUTRAL AND DETACHED.
 Be Empathetic and not Sympathetic.
 Know what is NOT to be done.
 Understand what do you do.

12. Q & A