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Agility How-to

Designer

Architect

Versatile

Mentor

Leadership

Solutions Provider

  • NORTH AMERICA / EU / ASIA PACIFICRemote Ready
  • DESIGNER / ARTITECTA Creative Visionary
  • SOLUTION PROVIDERProven Track Record
  • COMMUNICATORA Collboration Maestro
  • AGILE PROFESSIONALSReal World Understanding

Our aim is to assist you in applying practical solutions derived from your academic knowledge.

We avoid merely imitating the practices of software companies like Google and Amazon, but rather strive for a tailored and thoughtful approach towards your organization and industry. As practitioners with decades of hands-on experience, our knowledge goes beyond mere classroom learning.

We contribute to the growth of exceptional individuals, from top-level executives to individual contributors, leveraging our experience working across the entire company to propel projects forward. We are experienced Agile Coaches. That guide teams through the Agility Agile transformation so that they can deliver twice the value—with twice the joy—in half the time.


About Us

Forrest Taylor Graham, President/COO

Hello! I'm not your typical suit-and-tie professional – I'm all about infusing creativity, innovation, and collaboration into every project. Think of me as:

DESIGNER: A Creative Visionary – Turning imagination into inspiring works of reality. SOLUTION PROVIDER: An Innovation Enthusiast – Constantly seeking fresh and inventive solutions. COMMUNICATOR: Collaboration Maestro – Building bridges to bring ideas to life, together.

Over the past 20+ years, I've thrived in diverse industries and markets, where ego takes a back seat to good old-fashioned creativity. What I love most? It's transforming everyday moments into extraordinary experiences through humble, yet powerful, creativity.

Taking my years of practical application of Agile, CMMI, PMI, Six Sigma, ITIL book learning, concepts and other methologies by turning that into real-world hands-on practices.

But enough with the formalities – the truth is, I'm a creative soul who just can't resist making things optimimal, provide quality of life and helping others do the same.

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Hours of Works

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Western Boots

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Trip to the other side

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Patent Owned

BIG THINKER

HUMOR

COMMUNICATOR

ENABLER

Others coming soon as they are a little shy, just need some more time.

Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se. Charles Eames

Philosophy

Engage

Through meaningful engagement with our customers, we craft enduring solutions centered on achieving long-term outcomes. This not only meets our customer's needs but also enhances employee motivation and satisfaction.

Innovate

Through the identification of innovative ideas and swift responses, we provide Minimum Viable Products and Solutions that effectively address real problems encountered by our customers.

Empower

Through unwavering dedication to our customers' missions, we empower them by successfully delivering their goals on time and within budget.

What We Do

Design

For decades, We've been leveraging our ablility to look at workflows, process and procedures to design optimal solutions. Including hardware, software and materials used for cost saving in the tens of millions of dollars in saving and or sales. Designing and architecting POS - Point of Sales systems for convenince stores and LIS - Lab Information Systems for cancer laboratories.

Technologies

Though we are not billing ourselves as a Developer, Quality Assurance or DataBase or System Administrator anymore, as we have in the past. Which means we can bridge the gap with creative types, scientists types, agilist/PMI types and coding types and make all those nice Executives and Leaders even happier as a mentor and coach.
Oh, and we use the Atlassian Suite. among others.

Chaos into Organization

We have had experience throughout the entire life of process improvements, including: software development, quality assurance, standard operating procedures and process, requirements, backlog management, trouble shooting, operations and etc. Across over half dozen industries. Deploying a lasting structure.
"Forrest is one of those rare people who can create organization from chaos." quote by Kevin Stader

Services

Core Creative Services

  • Expert

    MindsetSMART Product Imaging, Elevance Health, Anthem, Jaguar Land Rover, OHSU-Knight Diagnostics, Caris Life Sciences, Shell Oil, JDA, Intactix, CanMaxWoah! Yes, our President was actually doing Agile practices years before Agile was released as a methology now mindset. What a benefit to know how the industry has evolved, especially technology, because our leader been there. And still is today on the cutting edge.

  • Expert

    TMAG - Transformation Maturity Agility GuidelinesOrganization Agility with Maturity Elements – Quantitative and Qualitative stages: 1) Preparation, 2) Transparacy, 3) Predictablity, 4) Quality, 5) Performance, 6) AlignmentFor promotion to next TMAG, 80% must be met. recommendation = minimum 75% - there are behaviors that will not be met (e.g., DevOps) as they are not available. Team will be able to meet 100% if able. This is definitely a collaborative effort, when done right with C-Level Leadership, Management, DevOps and Everyone. Sometimes, too many just take a project over instead of guiding, informing and helping.

  • Professional

    Iteration/Sprint ZeroWe do Iteration/Sprint 0 at the beginning of a project or when there is a major new focus or if a reset is needed or restarts as well as any other major impact on the team, scope etcPRODUCT: Establish and make visible the vision and the pipeline of work that the team will do. TEAM: Ready the team with knowledge, skill, tools and process. ENVIRONMENTS: Install, configure and test tools: setup workrooms and collaboration spaces, creating visibility. ARCHITECTURE: Defining the high-level architecture and design goals to guide emergent and incremental delivery of business value.

  • Professional

    PO Mentoring ProgramElevance Health, Anthem, Jaguar Land Rover, Caris Life Sciences, IntactixThe Product Owner (PO) is a member of the Agile Team responsible for defining Stories and prioritizing the Product(s) to streamline the execution of program priorities while maintaining the conceptual and technical integrity of the Features or components for the team. For most enterprises moving to Agile, this is a critical role, typically translating into a full-time job.

    The PO is the member of the Agile team who serves as the Customer proxy responsible for working with Product Management and other stakeholders—including other POs—to define and prioritize stories in the team backlog. The PO also attends most relevant Product Management meetings about planning and Program Backlog/Vision refinement.

  • Professional

    Kaizen Continuous ImprovementsElevance Health, Anthem, Jaguar Land Rover, Caris Life Sciences, VerizonKaizen is a strategy where employees at all levels of a company work proactively to accomplish steady incremental improvements to the business processes.

    Will cover Kaizen Philosopy, Methods - Beginner's Guide, 5S's, Kanban Basics, Kanban Plus+, Kanban Management Prospective and more.

Hard Skills

  • Expert

    Atlassian SuiteJIRA, Confluence, Bitbucket, Bamboo and etcFeature: Work Management, IT Service Management, Agile & DevOps.

    Besides those core that we all know (or should), we also have used IBM RTC-Rational Team Concert, HP Suite, SharePoint, Visual Source Safe, Team Foundation Server and numerous others.

  • Professional

    Add-ons or Plug-insEazyBI, Structures, Custom APIs and many otherWe understand how to leverage these types of add-ons to enhance your growth, tracking, optimization and course corrections along with documenation to the right level you need without the extra overhead for a streamline approach to restore quality of life.  

  • Professional

    Splitting Up Stories and EpicsLook at what are the challenges and opportunities for splitting storiesStory Estimation and Sizing, Acceptance Criteria (Gherkin), Splitting up Stories, Actual table that walks people through YES/NO questions as what you can do to split a story.

People Skills

  • Expert

    Humans!What a smack in the face to humans to refer to communication as 'soft skills'So we don't see them as such. We love collaboration, mentoring, pushing a team forward or clearing that blocker when we can. We are constantly learning, sharing, teaching. Rinse and repeat.

  • Professional

    Conflict Resolution StrategiesDid you know that about 85% of employees deal with some type of workplace conflict from time to time? 29% say they deal with conflict nearly all of the timeSimple Steps to Conflict Resolution in the Workplace: Did you know, Don't Ignore Conflict, Clarify What the Issue Is, Bring Involved Parties Together to Talk, Be an Active Listener, Don’t Allow Interruptions, Identify a Solution, Agree With Participants on the Best Solution, Continue to Monitor and Follow Up on the Conflict.

  • Professional

    Positive IntentAssume positive intent when analyzing the actions of others, especially directsEverybody has to deal with stress in the workplace, some more than others. Whether it’s having to do more with less, or other stressful challenges, negativity can easily infect the workplace. Often that negativity can manifest in snap judgments, the blame game, and erroneous assumptions about coworkers, especially in tense situations.

    How do you encourage employees to assume the best in others? It all starts with taking steps to build a work environment of positive intent.


We are not just about Agile but actual Agility and providing solutions for streamlining and optimization.

Contact us for a full list of Core Creatfive Services, Hard Skills and People/Soft Skills material for training & mentoring.

Consulting Services

Training & Mentoring

We offer various training and mentoring on a cafeteria style from our list of material as well as other needs that you may need that is not published on our list so just ask and we will let you know if we can accommodate your needs. We have quite the list of core agile practical applications and methods translated into actual working practices.

Consultants Engaged

Plug our consultant into your organization for short or long term needs for your organization for such roles: Scrum Master (SM), Release Train Engineer (RTE), Solutions Train Engineer (STE), Product owner (PO), Agile Coach or Agile Project Manager.


Advisors on Retainer

Advisors on retainer for various needs or questions regarding process improvements, operations, assessments and etc. On-site visits, phone calls, email or virtual meeting with screen sharing. For a variety of industries: Software development, Operations, Healthcare, Automotive, Distribution, Logistics, IT, Oil & Gas and etc.

Examples of such notable successes include:

  • Implementing a 5-minute process change led to a significant reduction of 650 overtime hours in the distribution center. The following morning, there was a notable 30% improvement in performance.
  • The national average for the accessioning process is 30 minutes. Initially, organization took an average of 45 minutes for this process. However, through a comprehensive assessment and subsequent changes, we successfully reduced the processing time to under 15 minutes. This represents a 66% reduction in the time taken for the accessioning process. Additional improvement was achieved through futher evaluation and the incorporation of a single piece of equipment. As a result, we witnessed a remarkable 120% daily increase in the reporting of cancer patients to both the ordering physicians and the patients themselves.
  • By consulting with consumers and streamlining the evaluation of 27 different label formats, we successfully eliminated slide label errors. The process resulted in the adoption of three optimized label formats: one used 97% of the time, another used 2.9% of the time, and the last one utilized 0.1% of the time. Through this assessment, it was discovered that implementing a new label for slides could yield a cost-saving of 1 million dollars in the first year.
  • Automating test cases led to an 85% increase in execution efficiency compared to manual testing within three consecutive 2-week Scrum sprints.
  • Improved ART cycle time by over 50%. Started at 24-day to 11-day and ending at less than a 5-days work week.

    • Recruitment

    The Art and Science of Recruitment

     Recruitment is the art and science of finding and hiring the best talent for a job.
    Recruitment involves the strategic process of identifying and securing the most qualified individuals for a particular job. We prioritize the fulfillment of critical positions, encompassing three tiers of Scrum Master (SM, SM Sr., or SM Advisor), Release Train Engineer (RTE), Solutions Train Engineer (STE), Product Owner (PO), Agile Coach, or Agile Project Manager. Our services include consulting for projects of varying durations, offering both short and long-term solutions, contract-to-hire options, and direct-hire placements.
    Our commitment is to enhance company productivity by delivering top-tier talent for our clients. Leveraging our extensive network of professionals candidate, we ensure the perfect fit for your project.

    Testimonials

    Contact Us

    Forrest Graham

    President / COO

    Phone #

    360.975.9321

    Email Me

    Forrest.Graham@AgilityHow-to.com

    Address

    Chesapeake, Virginia, USA