Luminary officially accredited to provide Agile certifications

Several years ago, we embarked on a journey to overhaul our delivery model. The traditional waterfall model was broken, and it was clear that a new approach was needed.

How could a development model that was predicated on knowing all of the functional requirements of a project before it began, possibly provide the flexibility and adaptability required to create truly innovative digital solutions? 

Further, as a digital agency, how could we provide our services effectively and efficiently when each aspect of the delivery process was dependent on the completion of the one before it?

And from the client’s perspective, wouldn’t it be better to have visibility of the evolving outputs on a more frequent basis – to be able to recalibrate the direction on the fly, rather than having the agency do the bulk of the work in isolation before delivering a final product which may or may not align with expectations?

All of these considerations led us to look for an alternative to waterfall – and we have not looked back.

Why did we choose Agile?

Agile is the culmination of multiple development methods that had been used for decades, including Rapid Application Development and Lean. Agile had a major tipping point In the early 2000s with the development of the Agile Manifesto. It laid out an effective guide for software development that has been used by many major software development companies in the creation of most of the apps we all use today. In recent years Agile has evolved beyond software development into a more general project management methodology. 

“Agile was created by software companies frustrated with projects that were failing or taking too long,” explains Luminary CEO Marty Drill. “The waterfall model – which assumes that you can write a functional specs doc that accurately predicts all of an organisation’s needs from the outset – is crazy. By contrast, Agile recognises that agencies and clients need to come together to properly understand what the real users’ needs are, and only from this point can you start to devise solutions.

“We took on Agile because we wanted our clients to have the best available methodology for developing and implementing their digital strategy. We believe Agile is the most effective way to get the right functionality for the end user, the best way to empower a team to build it right, and the fastest way to get it to market.”

Becoming an Agile training provider

After training our entire team in the ways of Agile, and rolling it out across the vast majority of our client engagements over the past few years, we knew we had a successful formula. The feedback from both team members and clients was overwhelmingly positive.

But there was still a missing piece. Many of our clients told us that they felt confident to implement Agile ways of working under our guidance, but lacked the confidence to roll it out among their broader teams, or carry it through to other projects. We felt that the best way to help our clients really get the full benefits of Agile, was to become certified trainers ourselves.

So, over the past year we have been working with the International Consortium for Agile (ICAgile) – a leading global agile accreditation and certification body – to accredit our Agile Fundamentals (ICP) course. What we now have is a course that is independently accredited by ICAgile, and we are authorised to teach that course with attendees receiving an official certification directly from ICAgile.

Four of our team members are certified to deliver the course, including CEO Marty Drill, Delivery Director Jase Watson, and Senior Producers Anne-Marie Baker and Amanda Pooley-Brand.

Our Agile Fundamentals course will initially be rolled out among our clients. “By having our course independently certified, our clients have confidence in the material and the process, with the added bonus of us being able to certify participants as well,” says Drill. “In time, we will eventually extend the course beyond our existing clients.”