I recently made the difficult decision to leave Pyxis. I didn’t just leave a company, but also a family. I started at Pyxis in 2004 and what an amazing roller-coaster ride it was! I was first hired by François Beauregard as programmer then moved on to become a ScrumMaster and the last three years were mostly centered around Agile coaching. With the help of my colleagues, I’ve helped teams and organizations adopt Agile principles and practices in a wide range of industries. What a trip!
There a lot of advantages to working with multiple organizations. For one , you are front row center in witnessing the emergence of Agile in so many different colors. You also get to jump in a new corporate and team culture every 2 to 6 months. The downside is that you don’t always get to bring the Agile initiative to a state where you are confident it will live on. Contracts end, and consultants leave. Unless someone within the organization takes over and champions the Agile transition, chances are the initial efforts will peter out and muscle memory quickly take over. Unfortunately, internal coaches or ScrumMasters (I mean real ScrumMasters) are extremely difficult to find. Don’t get me wrong, the organizations we’ve worked with have done amazing things and for the most part, have significantly improved the way they create software. But I think we can do better. I want to do better.
This is one of the reasons I’ve left the consulting track to become a full-time ScrumMaster at iWeb. These guys have been working with Scrum for a while and all things considered, they are pretty good at it! Hopefully I can help and bring it to the next level.
Will I miss going to all those different organizations? Of course! It’s quite exhilarating to coach teams from gaming to avionic to insurance and then some. Experiencing all those different realities most definitely made me a better coach and helped fill that oh so important toolbox. Most of all, I’ll miss the folks at Pyxis. Colleagues like François Beauregard, Jean-René Rousseau and Stéphane Lécuyer, just to name a few, have helped me step up my game and will always remain friends.
Now it’s time to focus on one culture, one reality and help iWeb go from good to great. From what I’ve seen over the first few days, I am extremely confident. From programmers to product owners, ScrumMasters to CxOs, team leads to directors, everyone at iWeb seem to love what they do and are eager to learn. Can you really ask for a better setting?!
So there you go! A new start and I’m looking forward to sharing those magical moments!