Agile, Design Thinking, & Facilitation

Many organizations continue to struggle when attempting to design and implement user-centric solutions and approaches. Burdensome processes, poor communication, and difficulties managing changing requirements make it difficult to succeed, much less create a culture of continuous improvement. EK leverages Agile and Design Thinking in order to address these challenges and help organizations develop innovative ideas and enable a shift in how organizations solve problems. EK can help you become more agile so that you can reach your business goals, regardless of whether they are:

• Bringing products frequently to market that serve your customers better and increase market share
• Turning around technical departments that are not able to launch products, collaborate, or prioritize effectively
• Improving reliability and predictability in your product portfolio or PMO
• Reaping the full benefits of the agile mindset in your business, marketing, or sales teams, or expanding it to enterprise level

EK can additionally support your organization to proactively and strategically utilize Design Thinking in:

• Leveraging the collective expertise of multidisciplinary teams and their different perspectives to surface a range of potential solutions
• Engaging end users to design products, processes or services through ongoing collaboration
• Iterating and refining your solutions to test assumptions and learn quickly
• Responding to new user insights to quickly prototype ideas and maintain your competitive edge

Our skilled facilitators and experienced agilists have led agile adoptions in product teams big and small, simple and complex, in industries both traditional and forward-thinking. Our consultants are leaders in the Design Thinking field as instructors, but they also possess extensive expertise in Design Thinking, both through coursework and certification, as well as practical, hands-on experience. If you think agile or design thinking are unreachable for your organization, think again. Whether at the team, portfolio, or enterprise level, we have the know-how to apply the right combination of agile, lean, design thinking, and change practices to get it working for you.

• Applied Design Thinking
• Business Agility Transformation
• Agile Team Coaching
• Agile Program and Portfolio Management
• Agile Training & Facilitation
• Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and Agile Business Analysts

EK knows that the agile mindset manifests itself differently in each organization. We take the time to understand the dynamics within an organization and uncover the changes that are needed to successfully lead it into the future. We will work closely with you to develop effective strategies, build self-organizing teams, and create a cadence of communication and feedback. As with all of our efforts, we focus on delivering highest value transformation efforts first so and organization can benefit immediately.

We know as Knowledge Management practitioners that the human factor drives the success or failure of our initiatives, and too often, this is where KM programs fall short. EK offers support in integrating Design Thinking into your organization, identifying the best ways to engage you, our client, along with your end users proactively to ensure success. We recognize that Design Thinking can (and should) look different at every organization, and we will work closely with you to identify which strategies can be leveraged to best glean insights from your end users, engaging them throughout the strategy, design, and implementation process. In turn, we’ll support you through coaching and facilitation of these efforts to design solutions based on a holistic understanding of your end users. Most importantly, as with all of our work, we’ll help you to show tangible results quickly and early in the process, driving buy-in and alignment as we work to develop products and services that meet the needs of your organization.

If you are aiming to infuse agile into the way your whole company does business, EK’s enterprise agile coaches can help. By coaching business leaders to be more agile, we enable them to create a culture of learning, adaptation, and resiliency in their organizations. We go beyond a focus on product delivery and take a systemic approach to understanding the unique assets and challenges in transforming your organization. Our enterprise agile coaches will focus on iterative improvement to an array of unique business areas, including organization design, the budgeting cycle, knowledge practices, cultural needs, and governance.

Whether a team is working in Scrum, Kanban, XP, or a scaled framework, EK believes that with the proper guidance, team members can learn to be more accountable to each other. Our certified coaches guide teams in developing their ability to deliver quality products, make realistic plans and commitments, and increase their efficiency and effectiveness. For both technical and non-technical teams, we enable you to become more agile and deliver quality products more often.

From project initiation and visioning to managing a large portfolio of products, EK’s agile program and portfolio-level coaches can help you bring order to complexity and understand where agile is the best approach. By employing our proven techniques, we will help you deliver only the most useful and highest priority products and features to your customers. We also provide coaching for Product Owners, equipping them with tools and techniques to elicit and convey strong product vision, better manage business and development relationships, and facilitate projects more effectively throughout the design and development phases.

Agile concepts are simple and intuitive, but challenging to apply properly without the help of experienced agilists. For organizations that have failed with agile previously or need a place to start, EK’s Agile Activation Workshop can help you by aligning on a vision and goals around your unique transformation, determining key roles and responsibilities, and setting a clear roadmap toward transformation. In addition, for organizations that are ready for true business agility, EK’s Business Agility Starter Kit will get enterprise agility off on the right foot with templates, tools, and our expert support. EK also offers custom training and facilitation on request.

If you are looking to fill a gap on your agile team, our Certified Scrum Masters (CSM), Product Owners (CSPO), and Agile Business Analysts have you covered. We help to establish time-boxed sprints that result in working products, and work iteratively to build and refine products based on prioritized stakeholders needs. Our time-proven methods effectively track the team’s progress, remove roadblocks, and create an environment of open communication.

Our close guidance, hands-on training, and skilled facilitation provide you with the tools and capabilities needed to quickly show progress toward your business goals. EK can help you transform the way you do business by creating more transparency with customers and within teams, fostering a culture of feedback and continuous learning, and building the capacity to quickly adapt and react to changes in stakeholder needs. By partnering with EK in your agile and design thinking journey, your team will be prepared to deliver successful products, processes, and strategies, while maturing towards continuous improvement.