Robin McAlpine - Agile Coach @ BP
I worked with Chris as a fellow Agile Coach at bp where we collaborated on Agile Coaching Clinics and developed and an "Agile Learning Manifesto".
Chris knows his Agile frameworks and is pragmatic in their application (as you have to bp!). He is open and friendly - encouraging others to embrace and contribute to the wider Agile community - and always willing to help others.
He is deeply creative too - his Agile Escape Room was truely innovative. Would happily work with Chris again
Jon Sleeper - Facilitator & Coach
Chris is a great Agile coach to work with. He brings so much energy, drive and enthusiasm. And this is on top of his experience working in the field in industry and business helping teams to change and evolve using agile ways of working to do this.
Paul Mansell - Solutions Architect @ Wireless Logic
When Chris started at Wireless Logic we had little understanding of the Agile way of working, he soon changed that with the implementation of new methods and a toolset to compliment it.
He has moved us from waterfall to a complete Agile development team in a few sprints. Using his knowledge of agile and the tools he has implemented as helped us improve both the quality and frequency of releases.
Thanks Chris
Tom White - Senior Manager @ Accenture
Chris was the agile coach & tooling architect for a major cloud implementation with Oracle HCM / ERP.
He was a trusted advisor for all things Atlasssian and partnered with the development and QA leads to ensure our processes were tuned up and optimised.
The project in question is often cited as an example of what 'good' looks like for agile QA and the tooling architecture and processes were essential to this
Simon Trend - CTO @ Wireless Logic
Chris was engaged as a contractor to help mature and refine the agile delivery methods used at Wireless Logic.
His remit included; coaching and mentoring to members of our distributed development team (as well as to the wider business), leading the transformation at the team level by acting a scrum master, but also assisting me in transforming processes at the organisational level to support our new delivery methodology.
Chris very quickly worked to understand the ‘as-is’ ways of working, before presenting back to me his view of the ‘to-be’, complete with a change roadmap. Chris focused on making incremental improvements and within 6 months the quality of releases has improved along with our time to market. Chris would be an asset to any company looking to transition to agile methodology, or to any company looking to refine existing processes to achieve further agile maturity.
Tim Stalker - Product Manager @ BP
Chris developed a SAFe agile environment for us which really helped us deliver. The project was innovative and complex involving several agile teams spanning multiple geographies.
Chris has loads of ideas and uses games and other methods to help us continue to develop with purpose.
Highly recommend Chris for all things agile!
Karina Margole - Senior Scrum Master @ The Funding Circle
I worked with Chris as a Scrum Master at GForces, where he was hired as an Agile Coach to lead a company-wide Agile transformation using SAFe.
Throughout this transformation, I have witnessed Chris deliver numerous training sessions on Agile, SAFe and Scrum. His training sessions were engaging, clear to understand and very interactive. I saw him explaining the intricacies of Agile to people within the organisation from executive level to the people doing development work, from production to client services.
He also takes time to individually coach people on any aspect they are not clear on. He has excellent knowledge of multiple tools and techniques, including JIRA, Aha!, ChatOps, CI/CD pipelines, and others. Working with Chris I have found his help invaluable when dealing with team-level problems that required escalation to the executive level or if I just needed to bounce some ideas around.
All in all, I have found Chris very easy to work with and he has a really solid understanding of Agile, as well as a host of skills to help a company transform the way they work.
David Blackman - Data Architect @ BP
Chris is without doubt the best, most effective, agility lead I have worked with, in nearly 2 decades of my work as a solution and data architect.
The care he takes with his squads, and the rigor he employs, achieved not only results for our stakeholders, but engendered a palpable feeling of family and trust within the engineering teams, with product owners, and senior sponsors.
Since working with Chris, I have encouraged other agility leads to talk to him, learn from him, and he has always been happy to help.
Bobby Rai - Scrum Master @ CBRE
Chris had the mammoth task of introducing agile working practises into an organisation that was steadfastly waterfall in it's approach.
He tackled his responsibilities with aplomb, ensuring no stone was left unturned in the pursuit of transforming behaviours and implementing tools that would aid the transformation process.
Chris laid the foundations for the transformation, which has allowed the company to build upon the solid work undertaken by Chris.
He introduced agile to over 100 people via small workshops and identified ‘agile champions’ throughout the organisation, who would be able to carry on his good work.
Chris would be an asset to any organisation that is thinking of introducing agile practises, or has previously (unsuccessfully) tried to do so - he has the skills to quickly assess the nuances of an organisation and implement a tailored plan of action that can be measured against success criteria.
I would happily recommend Chris and work with him again.