Peter Woolley Capability Coach, Tuatahi First Fibre

About Peter Woolley

Kia Ora, my name is Peter Woolley and I currently contract to Tuatahi First Fibre as a Capability Coach, in the mighty Waikato in New Zealand. I started my IT career in the mid-90s as a Developer, I worked on a range of IT projects – the most interesting being in Auckland Prison (New Zealand’s highest security prison) and Y2K. Post 2000 inspired by supporting graduates on their career journey I became a Team Leader in 2005 and later a Software Development Manager. In 2010 I learnt about the Scrum Framework and the Agile Manifesto. The values and principles of the manifesto strongly resonated with me after years of sitting through long meetings debating changing requirements, reading large over-engineered design documents, endless programme office template changes and stop-all-work gate reviews for late projects. Over the next few years, I worked in a mix of Scrum Master and Software Development Manager roles. Seven years ago I decided to focus solely on Scrum Mastery and Agile Coaching. The joy of developing software and watching people use it has not left me, though these days it’s about the team and organisation, sharing in their successes and watching them grow strength to strength.

Do you find yourself being asked how long something will take and you have no idea? Do you miss deadlines, sprint goals, find yourself overwhelmed with a high number of defects, an almost endless cycle of development and testing and a sense of dread when it comes to go live.

Do you pause and ask – what’s missing? Why does each new piece of work feel like we are discovering how to do something over and over. Despite the hours in analysis, planning, estimating, and reflecting, the team is going in circles, frustrated at their own lack of progress.

Have you paused and asked – are we good at what we do? Do we have the skills, where’s the leadership, do we give and listen to feedback, where’s our standards and patterns and have we considered – are we a team?

In this session you will discover the symptoms of a team that lacks an understanding of being excellent – and may not realise it. How to start the journey to excellence, what you can do to support them on the way, the opportunities to celebrate, what excellence feels like and what tangible results to expect.