About Us

We help your people, teams, and leaders tackle opportunities and solve challenges in ways that build your internal capabilities. We do this by bringing our knowledge and practical experience, not just theory, to every engagement. We pair that with your people’s knowledge about your business, industry, challenges AND their experience. Helping improve, together, is what leads to lasting change.

Our Approach

Our services don’t involve telling you to follow a single theory or fixed model. Instead, we use theories and models as a foundation while bringing practical experience, practices, and ideas to help you and your teams tackle real challenges and opportunities. We use many concepts that are considered ‘agile’ in our work, and we like to point to their sources – because many of them existed before and beyond agile. We focus on helping your people develop the skills and capabilities to succeed. Our goal is to be with you just enough so your people can move forward.

Our coaching and consulting services complement our training approach. Our training creates opportunities to apply practical knowledge to your actual work by building on your knowledge and experience.  The ‘your knowledge’ part of this is critical. Wasted talent is the biggest issue we see in organizations. Coaching and training should both bring out the experience that is already in your people.

Balance & Collaboration

Balance is often associated with compromise. Compromise for many might even seem like a win-win, yet it is not. The idea is if you balance things, it is a trade off and you have to give up something you need. If everyone gives something up that would be valuable, how is that a win?  We look at balance through collaboration.  How do we balance ideas in ways that remove the limits and deliver something better.

  • We balance theory and pragmatism. We don’t come in and tell you to do something you know won’t work just because the “theory” says to do it. We combine theory with practical experience, agile practices, and ideas from outside the agile space to help you and your teams tackle real challenges and opportunities. Expect us to say things like “why would this theory not work in your reality?” or “we know everyone says to just do this, but in our experience it will not work well because… “.  We can still learn from theories, but we have to collaborate and apply them in practical ways to real work!
  • We balance our expertise and yours. We help your people develop the skills and capabilities to succeed. To do that, we bring expertise and knowledge, but we also tap into the knowledge your organization already has. We use both in the right measures to achieve the results you want. This process of collaboration with you and your experience brings even better results and longer-term value!
  • We balance intensity and duration. We often work with clients over the long term – but we are not there every day. Our experience shows that that slows your growth. The more we do for you, the less you learn to do for yourself. Instead, we work with you in short, focused bursts, giving you time to practice and lock-in the learning. Collaboration again plays a key role here. We want to collaborate with you so you are engaged in ways that you own your progress!

Who We Are

Allison Pollard

Allison Pollard

Allison Pollard is a coach, consultant, and trainer who brings the power of relationship systems intelligence to go beyond tasks, roles, and frameworks to create energy for change. She engages with people and teams in a down-to-earth way to build trust and listen for signals to help them learn more and improve. Allison focuses on creating alignment and connection for people to solve business problems together. Her experience includes working with teams and leaders in energy, retail, financial, real estate, and transportation industries to help improve their project/product delivery and culture. Allison currently volunteers as program director for Women in Agile’s mentorship program. Her agile community focus is championing new voices and amplifying women as mentors and sponsors for the next generation of leaders. Allison earned her bachelor’s degrees in computer science, mathematics, and English from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX. She is a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC), a foodie, and proud glasses wearer. Allison is a prolific speaker at professional groups and international conferences, including Scrum Gatherings and the Agile Alliance Agile20xx conferences. Allison is co-owner of Helping Improve LLC.

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Jake Calabrese

Jake Calabrese is a coach, trainer, and coach-consultant working to help organizations meet the promise of agile by going beyond agile practices to address culture challenges and help teams and leaders reach and maintain high-performance. He has unique expertise as an Organization & Relationship Systems Certified Coach (ORSCC), a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC), and Professional Certified Coach (PCC), and as a trainer and coach for Agile Companies (helping non-software organizations use agile). Jake created the AgileSafari cartoon series to introduce humor into the more challenging issues we have to tackle. Jake uses ideas from various areas of thinking such as: Lean, professional coaching, neuroscience, psychology, facilitation, brain-based training, improvisation, agile, kanban, and scrum. Jake regularly speaks at local and national conferences including Mile High Agile, Scrum Gathering, and Agile Alliance Agile20xx conferences. Jake is co-founder of Helping Improve LLC.

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Paul Tevis

Paul Tevis is an organizational effectiveness consultant who helps companies achieve better results through process improvement and leadership development. He works with leaders, teams, and individuals across multiple industries, in organizations at various stages of growth, and on a range of individual and organizational challenges. Drawing on his experiences as a software engineer, engineering manager, agile coach, trainer, facilitator, and executive coach he brings a variety of tools to bear on his clients’ challenges. Paul is an Organization & Relationship Systems Certified Coach (ORSCC) and a Prosci Certified Change Practitioner. He also is a frequent presenter at local and international conferences, including QCon and the Agile Alliance Agile20xx conferences. Paul is a co-founder of Helping Improve LLC.

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