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Helping teams align

for brilliant outcomes!

Thriving, high performing teams
Balance delivery speed with quality
Effective software delivery

Hi, I’m Sylvia MacDonald

I help leaders enable their people to thrive and build valuable high quality software leading to happy, loyal customers.

Using a pragmatic Lean and Agile inspired approach, I help organisations improve their development and release processes, build high performing teams and unblock their work flows.

Photo of Sylvia MacDonald

It's all about you!

Everyone’s context and challenges are different with a variety of aspects to consider

  • the people
  • the way they work and communicate with each other
  • the environment
  • the tech stack
  • the product itself
  • and of course the challenges and problems you have

So, the changes needed to improve your software delivery are unique to you too.  It depends on

  • where you are starting from
  • what challenges you have
  • which of those challenges are the most important to focus on first
  • the culture

Working with me

I take a three step approach to ensure we focus on the areas most important for you right now

Discover

Clarify the problem to solve

Define your success criteria

Highlight what’s blocking you

Recommend ways forward

Guide

Deliver tailored workshops

On topics specific to your challenges

To introduce concepts and skills

Enable

Work alongside your teams

Facilitate work discovery sessions

Upskill your people

High performers improve productivity, deploy frequency and quality in tandam, rather than at the expense of each other

Research based on the State of Devops reports shows that high performing software delivery teams are effective in how they interact with each other, structure their work, and that they view their contributions as valuable.

They spend more of their time on new, valuable work than on unplanned or re-work. They measure what matters and understand how to impact those measures effectively.

Some kind words

It’s been great working with Sylvia. She built strong coaching relationships with the teams she worked with, her calm and considered approach combined with her knowledge of flow and Kanban has been great for helping teams to break down and visualise the work.

Highly recommended

SashaSenior Manager Agile Delivery

Thank-you for all your hard work this year Sylvia.

I've appreciated your positive attitude, approachability and willingness to get stuck in and share your experience to the benefit of the teams you're working with.

We've come a long way, learned a hell of a lot, used it to continuously improve - and it's been a hell of a ride.

SashaSenior Manager Agile Delivery

Thank you Sylvia, you have been immense help to me personally and the progress of the team.
We hope to see you back at some point!

AdeleSenior Program Manager

I just wanted to say a big thank you for supporting the team with the Agile 101 workshop.
The content was well balanced for the team and it really helped us understand what the problem is we're trying to solve. Not 'hey we want to be agile'.

Our session in the afternoon was both practical and helpful at identifying key themes and challenges we need to overcome as a team. A big take out for me from yesterday was the work is resourcing the team, not the team is understanding what we need to achieve and how we resource against it.

Thanks again for taking the time out your busy day to help us be better."

FraserHead of Channel Marketing

Thanks so much for your patience and advice during the setup planning sessions for LCS to date.

It has been most helpful in bringing to life some of the principles, way of working in Agile to apply to our work. I have been trying to operate using some of the Agile methods of these over the last couple of years, but it has been much easier to understand and adapt them to the work whilst having someone already experienced in the methodologies to help me through it in a very practical sense.

You are great at listening to others, understanding the problem and making suggestions that help frame how we might improve and apply some of the Agile principles in different ways. That is not an easy task in a room full of opinionated people. Thanks!

WillPMO Analyst & Planner

Thanks all for your time yesterday, I think we made good progress and I think this will add loads of value as we go into business engagements for TOM design.

Big thank you to Sylvia as well in helping us think about the success criteria before diving in and for keeping us honest.

AlexEnterprise Architect

Thank you both very much for the Scrum Master training day last week and the follow up materials.

It was a very enlightening course and I took away lots of hints and tips which I will use in rituals going forward.

ClareLead Project Manager

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Find out more about working with me