For more than 10 years, Robbie Mac Iver has helped product development groups achieve improved business results by embracing agile principles and values. By focusing on true value to the business, he assists organizations in developing a clear product-focused strategy that balances the need for tactical, incremental improvements with the bold, differentiating strokes of far-reaching change. An advocate of durable, self-organizing teams, Robbie helps disparate groups of people learn to work together to become high-performance team possessing a sense of shared commitment and accountability for the outcomes they create.

Using a pragmatic, mindful approach that embodies concepts from the agile, product management, and leadership development communities, Robbie helps organizations find their own unique balance of Team, Product Management, Delivery, and Agile Leadership practices to more effectively delivery high quality, high value technology solutions that advance the business.

As owner of the The Mac Iver Group, Robbie serves as an Agile Coach offering consulting services in Agile Adoption, Product Management, and Agile Leadership. He is certified by the ScrumAlliance as a Certified Scrum Master and a Certified Scrum Professional; is Pragmatic Marketing® Certified; is certified to administer the Leadership Agility 360 Assessment ™; is a facilitator of Innovation Games® for Agile Teams; and is a Certified LeSS Practitioner.

Robbie is a past President and Advisor of the Agile Leadership Network and founder of the local chapter in Houston, Texas; Ambassador for the Agile Exectuvie Forum 2016; and is a frequent conference presenter.

Contact me for further details.

First I work very closely with you to help identify and understand your improvement goals and how you will be able to determine progress toward them. Whether in agile adoption, product management, or evolving leadership, I serve as a guide to help chart the initial course, encourage the discipline to stay the course, and when necessary advocate a change in course based on the on-going organizational learning.

Initially I introduce perspectives that are based on my own beliefs, experiences and knowledge, and use that to bring clarity to our initial steps together. Over time it is important that you broaden those perspectives to begin to define your own unique views and beliefs that best fit your organization. To that end I serve as an Information Curator to introduce new and varying ideas, viewpoints, beliefs, concepts and experiences through reading recommendations, articles, blogs, webinars and other sources I believe to be of value. Many of those are referenced on this site.

Finally, I serve as an outside voice and observer to help you better understand how you, your teams and your organization are viewed by others. This often reveals oddities, inconsistencies and inefficiencies that have become too ingrained to be readily apparent to you. Being that reflection in a Mirror, I can provide timely and specific feedback on the effect and impact of your organization's current activities to reveal a path toward improvement.

For a leading marketer of natural gas, power and natural gas liquids (NGL) in North America:

Conducted an agile maturity assessment encompassing Team, Product Management and Leadership practices that led to an improvement roadmap for the organization:

• Observed teams in action
• Conducted team and organizational level retrospectives
• Consulted on product management roles and objectives
• Coached for understanding of the agile/Scrum spirit and mindset
• Collaborate with organization's leadership to craft improvement recommendations and roadmap

For a large exploration and production company:

Consulted on a large IT Program utilizing Scrum to update major business processes and systems:

• Refocused product roadmap and release planning to highlight the creation of business value
• Improved the understanding of the Product Owner role and created a "product team" to fulfill the product strategy, technical direction and organizational change aspects of the role
• Better aligned work items to the product roadmap with improved product backlog management practices
• Transitioned multiple teams from learning Scrum to doing Scrum

For one of North America's leading providers of midstream energy services:

Worked directly with the CIO and senior management to adopt agile principles and values across the IT organization of 300 persons:

• Transitioned multiple delivery teams to Scrum or Kanban practices increasing visibility and delivery credibility
• Introduced product management concepts across multiple IT departments to ensure business needs and priorities were appropriate understood and communicated
• Consulted with product owners to define product road maps and release plans focusing on delivering the minimal viable product
• Applied specific Scrum and Kanban measurements for teams and leadership to understand progress and continuous improvement
• Initiated effort to create a portfolio management view of key IT initiatives using Kanban techniques
• Established an agile improvement team to assume the role of change agent and agile champion to promote the on-going refinement and use of agile techniques
• Identified key agile champions at the team, business, and leadership levels who could help sustain the agile adoption
• Provided consulting and coaching at various leadership levels to better understand the leadership needs of agile teams
• Consulted on team alignment with teams and leadership to establish a principle of one team, one backlog, one process
• Raised the engagement level of teams, team members, business stakeholders and leaders by increasing the focus on business priorities and frequent delivery
• Introduced Communities of Practice concept to promote organization-wide information sharing and learning

For a leading oilfield services provider:

Provided agile consulting and coaching services to implement agile principles and practices across multiple product line organizations:

• Introduced agile principles and values to software development organization across multiple product lines
• Transitioned multiple software delivery teams to Scrum practices
• Introduced Pragmatic Marketing concepts and techniques to support the Product Management function to define and prioritize work based on business value.
• Consulted with Product Managers/Product Owners to ensure appropriate product domain knowledge was provided to delivery teams
• Consulted with product line management to better align delivery teams to products
• Worked with delivery management and vendors to improve the effective use of distributed and outsourced teams
• Contributed to the definition and implementation of an enterprise wide stage-gate project management process by ensuring an appropriate representation of agile principles and Scrum practices

For a regional financial institution:

• Provided training and coaching services to assist the IT organization in adopting agile values and practices in order to improve delivery on business objectives and priorities.

For a provider of oil & gas software products:

• Provided agile leadership and coaching for a product development group to improve their adoption of agile values and practices.
• Consulted on organizational changes to more effectively communicate organizational and product goals, and on structuring local and offshore teams to improve product delivery.
• Served as ScrumMaster to build and reinforce development best practices and improve team dynamics.

In support of a multi-million dollar supply chain centralization initiative:

• Defined Agile project management process to bring suppliers into the national supply chain network by more effectively adapting to the varying levels of complexity and uncertainty presented by individual suppliers. Conducted workshops to implement the new project management process resulting in a clearer understanding of business processes and goals, increased team accountability, and improved focus on business value objectives.
• Conducted business process workshops to identify process improvement opportunities, clarify organizational accountabilities, and define automation requirements to improve supplier adoption for the regional distribution centers. Led cross functional team employing iterative and incremental techniques to build a central data repository and web-based productivity tools to support the improved business processes.

For a provider of information security services and products:

• Improved customer satisfaction by overseeing relationship with principal supplier and establishing a formalized working relationship with the vendor's technical team. Coordinated technical requirements, established clear and consistent communications processes, and managed internal and external expectations of the vendor/supplier relationship.
• Led a transition program to set up new software engineering team. Consulted on organization strategy, team organization, and the development of best practices for commercial concerns and managing team priorities. Mentored team leads on software development processes, and building positive customer relationships.

For a provider of identity management software products:

• Increased product quality and customer satisfaction for a client software product allowing deployment of 400K seats in Fortune 100 global enterprises resulting in sales of $4.2M.
• Led use case analysis and design effort to enable senior management to make an informed decision to halt a $2M development effort to re-design and re-architect a flagship software product.
• Managed team of 5 professionals within a budget of $750K to evaluate and select the Security Information Management (SIM) technology partner to maximize network security for the Athens 2004 Olympic Games and to support the organization's Managed Security Services solution offering.
• Improved the usability of a key application by managing a team of 3 professionals within budget of $300K to re-develop and deploy the web-based application.