Making Experienced Consultants Even Better
Amplio Consultant Educators
What is an ACE?
An Amplio Consultant Educator (ACE) is a senior consultant under the tutelage of Al Shalloway. The ACE learning journey takes excellent coaches and makes them better.
The yearlong learning journey compresses Al Shalloway’s 2+ decades long experience into one year. The journey includes state of the art methods as well as tips and tricks Al has learned over the years.
ACEs can participate at the level appropriate for them:
First Level
Be a better consultant. ACEs are good coming into the program but get better under one of the more well-rounded Agile consultants and authors (7 co-written books on topics from Design Patterns to Scrum to Agile at Scale).
Second Level
ACEs have the opportunity to teach Success Engineering’s Amplio Team learning journey.
Third Level
Top level ACEs can work with consulting and internal learning organizations to create internal training programs for them.
Prerequisite
Some Familiarity with Scrum
Duration
36 one-hour sessions over a year
Cost
$1,195 annually with a price break for those enrolled before the end of year.
Format
Live virtual (Zoom)
Audience
This learning journey is for experienced consultants who want to both enhance their consulting ability as well as to be able to provide training in Agile at scale, product management, and the team. Applicants for the learning journey must have completed the DAVSC or the Amplio Development Masterclass.
It is also designed for consulting companies to use to both improve their staff and to offer unique services to their clients.
It can also be used by organizations that want to bring tailored, effective training into their organizations at a significantly lower cost than paying outside consultants. One no longer needs to choose between high cost or training that doesn’t fit the organizations needs and creating your own. It also enables consistency of training across the organization without imposing specific methods on individual teams.
Grounded in the science of learning and integrating coaching
It has been well-established that intensive training over 1-4 days is very ineffective. Over 80% of the information presented is lost in just a few days. It’s why no college teaches this way. People learn best in little chunks and where they can apply it between sessions. The Amplio Consultant Educator learning journey is an ongoing study program. Three one-hour sessions are provided each month.
Amplio’s approach is based on Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise and Seeing what others don’t: The Remarkable Way We Gain Insights. “Peak” tells us that it’s essential to stretch people’s skills a little on an ongoing basis. Presenting concepts in patterns instead of just practices makes the material more applicable and creates the foundation for continued learning. “Insights” provides methods to enable people to connect the dots of the advanced concepts presented. These two approaches manifest each week based on a virtual board that participants use to see a problem and learn how to solve it. This not only trains participants in needed skills but these virtual boards can also be used in their workplace.
Great information has little value if it can’t be conveyed in the workplace. Amplio Development, therefore, integrates coaching methods in each lesson.
ACEs learn concepts and practices not in any popular framework. We have found these to be essential to be able to tailor an approach to a particular situation while keeping it simple for the adopters.
These concepts create a coherent approach and can be adjusted to the situation at hand.
Why pattern languages are essential
Patterns are ‘solutions to recurring problems in a context.” Hundreds exist. There is no need to re-invent the wheel. But organizing them for simple adoption is required.
Collaborative engagements
Consulting engagements require jointly deciding what to do and leaving a collaboration board with the client so that they can continue the work.
Reducing the "J-curve"
Most “j-curves” in adoptions are due to not knowing how to introduce change in a manner that 1) doesn’t cause resistance and 2) has each step assist the next one’s adoption
The Idealized Value Stream
Value stream mapping has come into vogue. But few companies will provide the time to do them well. This approach provides 80% of the value for 20% of the work.
Attend to the customer journey
Increase innovation by attending to how customers get their job done.
The analysis matrix
Learn a breakthrough way to analyze high variability problems which would otherwise take writing hundreds of stories.
Learn Tom Gilb's and others' work
First principle-based approaches should never stand on their own but incorporate value from others’
Dealing with complexity
Integrating how to deal with complexity is essential. You will be faced with it from start to forever.
Miro Boards Included.
Several Miro Boards are included in this and other Amplio workshops.
The Amplio Workshops are not your normal workshops:
All are grounded in the science of learning and integrates coaching
- Taught in small increments over time to allow the adoption of what’s learned in the workplace
- Integrates coaching since participants must be able to convey what’s learned to the people they work with
- Presents a blend of theory and practice, which not only improves retention but enables participants to go beyond what is presented
They use virtual collaboration whiteboards to present and learn concepts
- These boards enable a significant amount of learning
- They are provided to participants to use after the workshop in their work
- This enables asynchronous learning in both the workshop and when they are used in the participants’ workplaces
Mindset and practices
- Based on the theories of Flow, Lean, and the Theory of Constraints
- Includes several essential practices not taught in the popular frameworks
- Based on a pattern language enabling it to be simple to start, but richer as needed, and tailorable to the people using it
Our workshops are just the beginning
- One-year program provides for after-workshop support
- Tools used to teach participants are made available to them to use in their workplace
- Q&A sessions enable participants to ask experts for real-time advice as needed
Mindset and practices
Amplio is based on the first principles of Flow, Lean, and the Theory of Constraints. This means that it can be contextualized to any situation. It provides a simple start that adjusts as the teams learn by providing a way to tell which of several optional practices would be an improvement.
It also includes several essential practices that aren’t in popular frameworks. These enable much better product management and workflow management.
The workshop is just the beginning
Instructor
Al Shalloway
Al Shalloway is the founder and CEO of Success Engineering. Al is a recognized thought leader in the areas of: Lean, SAFe, Kanban, Scrum, design patterns, Acceptance Test-Driven Development, Lean-management, value creation networks, Lean product management and more. He is the creator of the FLEX system that is the heart of the Disciplined Agile Value Stream Consultant workshop. He has co-written 5 books ranging from Design Patterns to Agile at Scale. He holds Masters degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Mathematics from MIT and Emory respectively. He is an international speaker. He is a former contributor to SAFe and SPC trainer.
Why you should take this workshop if you are a professional coach.
Most “coaching” workshops today are about how to follow a given framework. This workshop enables you to see what the people you are coaching needs based on their situation. Go beyond being a mere facilitator. Learn how to assist teams in working in better ways.