LeanIT

Paul has a deep understanding of Lean and Agile principles and practices, with a particular interest in the “people” side of things. He seeks to create environments where people can flourish, do their best work, and take pride and satisfaction in delighting their customers. He is very approachable, calm, and easy to work with

I highly recommend Paul as an Agile Coach to anyone who seeks to improve the way they work in a positive and sustainable manner.

I had the pleasue of working with James on an Agile transformation in 2016/2017. The challenge was enormous for all of us and we all learnt a lot from it. James is a highly skilled Agile and Lean thinker and his advice and guidance along the way was hugely valuable. He both practices and trains in Lean thinking. He was one of 3 key consultants but the only one responsible for delivery as well. He was the lead for a continuous delivery team. Working with James in this domain showed me that James knows how to take the lead but also servant lead at the right times. He creates an environment for his people to allow them to do their best work. James enjoy’s getting the most out of the teams he works with through empowerment. James helps people understand what the right thing to do is rather than best reputational thing to do – he has strong moral values. James delivers to task/expectation like nobody else I’ve worked with. He has leadership skills and technical skills – therefore he can connect on different subjects and different levels.
Lastly, if you need an honest, hardworking, knowledgeable, servant leader to help you deliver – you can’t go far past James.

The simulation made it very visual how changing the perspective and the goal from the department to the value produced to the customer improves the process, reduces waste, WIP and increases the benefit (in this case the profit). It was also great to see how the team realised at the end that without communicating with each other and understanding the dependencies of each department it would be challenging to get benefit.

James was instrumental in taking MSD from big-bang releases to more predictable regular release cycles where he established new release processes, challenged the norms, and lead a team developing MSDs Deployment pipeline. Under often difficult circumstances, he took every opportunity to educate and share his wisdom. He is technically capable and industry aware. It was a pleasure to be have worked with James during this journey at MSD.

We had been trying to implement DevOps practices for a while but there was something missing, somehow it just wasn’t catching on. Then James came along and lit the spark that set the movement alight. James was able to be the link between senior management and the delivery teams on the ground. He was able to create a safe space for willing individuals to come together to try to create something awesome. Make no mistake, it is a long and hard journey, but it can be done. You just have to have faith in your people and support them – that is something that James excelled at.

We used James and Paul from LeanIT to run their Lean Simulation Training across three individual teams from within the Wintec Student Enrollment and Information Centre. The simulation was a great way for those that participated, not only to better understand key lean principles, but to experience these first hand. James and Paul tailored the simulations around a tight schedule we imposed in order to give everyone the chance to participate – this was really useful for us. The feedback received from the teams was very positive and as managers we noticed immediate outcomes with staff questioning and considering improvements to business processes. I would certainly recommend the Lean Simulation Training for a wide variety of teams and businesses.