Accelerating Your Potential

Agile, Agile Coaching

As agile methodologies have increased in popularity, more and more companies have pushed to implement agile processes to varying levels of success. The majority of companies that struggle with agile do so because they have neglected the most important aspect of agile development - the culture.

Catalyst coaches individuals to approach problems with an agile mindset while developing a culture of collaboration and communication that unites teams around a common goal. This provides teams with the skills and agility required to continually excel in an ever-changing working environment.

While working closely with stakeholders we help to define bespoke, optimised processes that are specifically tailored to your current situation. Catalyst streamlines your existing processes so you can reliably deliver cost-effective, high-quality software products in a timely fashion.

Discover how you can maximise your resources to deliver better products, faster.

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Uniting Development, QA, Operations and Management.

Strive for high-quality, maintainable software.

Maximise your most valued assets and achieve more.

Key Focuses

Manage Software Architecture and Quality to develop cost-effective, maintainable software.

Capitalise on investments in unit/integration, automation and manual testing.

Minimise friction for deployments while maximising confidence in the software you deliver.

Encourage open discussion to find better solutions and optimisations.

Design processes and workflows perfectly suited to a team's unique circumstances.

Break down department lines to build strong, cross-disciplinary teams focused on a common goal.

How does it work?

Catalyst is developed and modified to accommodate our client's unique requirements because there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, Catalyst comprises of the following core principles:

Identify Goals

Discuss Problems and Ambitions.

Shadow the Team

Observe and connect with the teams.

One-to-ones

Conversations with all stakeholders.

Action Plan

Devise a list of potential actions.

Iterate and Improve

Implement, Revise and Accelerate.

Identify Goals

When we start working with a new client, we aim to build a detailed picture of a team, it’s current position and it's goals/ambitions. Since teams are a function of their past experiences we also want to understand how the team was formed and how its processes have been shaped over time.

No two development teams are the same, so we can’t expect a cookie-cutter approach to be effective. Understanding the team, and what makes it tick, means we can tailor Catalyst to best suit your needs and start developing potential action plans.

Gathering this information usually entails a couple of discussions with managers directly responsible for the software teams and general development processes. While introductions with the wider team aren’t necessary at this stage, we may identify other key individuals that we would like to find more information from before moving to the next stage.

Shadow the Team

Getting a comprehensive understanding of a team’s workflow and dynamic is only possible by observing the team in its natural habitat. By sitting with the team and watching them go about their daily activities we can identify where reality differs from perception.

During this process, we are aiming to get an understanding of how an initial idea transitions to a released feature. We are then looking to identify strengths but more importantly, pain points and potential for improvement. At Varealis we don’t just focus on development, we care about how every discipline comes together to deliver software.

At all stages of this process, individuals mustn’t feel as if they are being assessed or marked. We want them to know that we are here to help them discover better ways of working and that we are here to dictate how they should work. We pride ourselves on the long-lasting connections that we can build with individuals during this integration stage.

One-to-ones

Strong teams are made up of a diverse set of unique individuals, all of which have their desires, ideas and motivations. Strong teams become exceptional teams when all members can coalesce around a single objective. We believe that this is only possible when everybody feels comfortable and valued.

We cut through the usual office politics using informal one-to-ones to engage with all individuals. All of the best ideas are homegrown and making everyone feel confident and comfortable talking about themselves and their experiences are essential if you want to unlock those ideas.

Catalyst is all about coaching teams and individuals to work together more efficiently. This is done by mixing our experiences with your team's best ideas to develop bespoke development processes that suit your needs.

Action Plan

Catalyst is all about finding and developing friction-free processes that empower teams to deliver business value effectively and efficiently. Instead of force-feeding Agile practices into an environment where they are not suited, we want to work with clients to find workflows that suit them.

After our investigation, we will present back our findings and a suggested course of action to the client. At this point, we would work together with the client to find a way to address concerns and streamline processes in a cost-effective and disruption-free manor.

All feedback will be given to the client anonymously to help team members feel comfortable proving their honest personal insights. However, credit is given to individuals who come up with valuable ideas/changes, assuming they feel comfortable doing so.

Iterate and Improve

During the implementation phase, monitoring and maintaining team engagement is essential. We continue to observe the team and organise one-to-ones to make sure that the changes are beneficial to everybody and to encourage individuals to feel comfortable putting ideas forward to the team.

As processes start to change, new ideas and/or pain-points should be identified and addressed as soon as possible. No process is perfect, and there will always be some hiccups along the way, but by continuously iterating and improving over time we can tend towards perfection.

The most important thing, at this stage, is to encourage the teams to work together without external guidance. As our service comes to an end we aim to leave teams in a state where they can continue to adapt to their ever-changing environments.

Catalyst

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Catalyst Consulting

Accelerating Your Potential

Agile, Agile Coaching

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Key Focuses

Software Development

Quality Assurance

Operations

Communication

Management

Teamwork

How does it work?

Identify Goals

Shadow the Team

One-to-ones

Action Plan

Iterate and Improve

Great code builds great companies.

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