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emergn Announces Industry First – Agile and Lean Continuous Improvement Platform

markbarnes — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:45:37 +0000

emergn Announces Industry First

Agile and Lean Continuous Improvement Platform

emergnEnablement™ Offers Experience-Driven Enterprise-Wide

Perspective on Agile and Lean Business Practices

March 10, 2010 – New York and London– emergn, a global professional services and business agility firm, today announced the company’s innovative, problem-centric and value-driven continuous improvement platform, emergnEnablement™. As a first of its kind, emergnEnablement provides companies with a proven blend of agile and lean practices, principles and values to better diagnose and address systemic issues facing both IT and Business organizations.

Based on over a decade of experience from delivering change and improvement programs within global enterprises, emergnEnablement focuses on effectively identifying and understanding the source of an organization’s problems and the values that are most important before selecting a set of proven best practices to solve the issues.

emergnEnablement is based on over a decade of experience from delivering change and improvement programs within global organizations. The platform focuses on effectively identifying and understanding the source of an organization’s problems and the values that are most important before selecting a set of proven best practices to solve the issues.

emergnEnablement consists of hundreds of practices based on real work in customer engagements that have delivered outstanding results. It provides a means for an effective delivery and governance system, supports investments made in process frameworks and establishes transparency, accountability and responsibility from internal staff as well as partners and third party suppliers.

emergn is the thought leader in helping companies implement these proven lean and agile principles across the entire value chain, establishing a foundation for managing cost while effectively delivering high value projects. Unlike traditional agile consultants who are essentially solution providers focused on a small layer of an organization, emergn provides companies with a tested platform that facilitates continuous improvement, mitigates risks and ensures alignment with an organization’s value currencies.

“emergnEnablement allows companies to source a proven platform of best practices to address the key issues that prevent them from meeting their goals,” said Alex Adamopoulos, founder and CEO of emergn. “Users are able to have the confidence that the recommended solution is not presumed before the consultant understands their needs and that the problem diagnosis and action plan framework provided are tested, proven and uniquely customized to address their key issues.”

The platform enables organizations to continuously deliver the highest value while decreasing time-to-market, align organizational and IT goals, significantly reduce costs, increase productivity and optimize product and service quality.

emergnEnablement addresses the fact that many organizations are not equipped to diagnose and effectively resolve their biggest enterprise-wide challenges. emergn is the only business agility partner that provides an experience-driven lean and agile platform to better meet these organizational challenges and mitigate risk.

About emergn

emergn is a global, professional services and business agility firm that blends agile and lean principles to optimize the way organizations develop and deliver solutions across the enterprise. By offering a unique blend of agile and lean methodologies, emergn operates as a thought leader in helping enterprises solve their complex organizational and IT business problems. As the leader in providing enterprise-wide enablement, emergn has secured a strong benchmark of revenue and forecasted growth, and has earned an impressive list of partners, including British Airways, Deutsche Telekom, Standard Life, British Telecom, HBOS, and Centrica. Based in New York and London, emergn also has offices in Dublin and Guangzhou. For more information, visit www.emergn.com.

Press Contacts

Jamie Bull

Commonwealth Creative Associates

508-620-0791 ext.12, pr@emergn.com

emergn Prepares for Growth in 2010 to Follow Strong Inaugural Year

johnvanderpool — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 08:00:27 +0000

Brand-name customer wins and unique service offerings establish foundation to capitalize on growing industry trends

NEW YORK and LONDON– December 14, 2009: emergn, a specialized consultancy enabling lean and agile principles across the value chain, experienced a successful year of growth and expansion in 2009. After launching the company in the second quarter of 2009, emergn launched new engagements with twelve global companies, and concludes its inaugural year with a strong benchmark of revenue and forecasted growth.

Since its inception this year, emergn has been successful in completing several strategic initiatives, including the hiring of executive leadership and top industry consultants, and the launch of several new service offerings. These include AgilePMO™ and emergn education, which comprises a complete curriculum of practical training courses for corporations that focus on lean, agile, and sourcing competencies. The emergn offerings are part of the company’s leading model called emergn enablement™, a comprehensive framework supported by best practices and process IP developed by emergn and recognized by industry consortiums.

Since the company’s launch in 2009, emergn has secured significant contract wins and furthered other existing relationships with customers including British Airways, Deutsche Telekom, Standard Life, British Telecom, HBOS, and Centrica.

“Companies are seeing a real need to address the misalignment between business, IT, and service providers,” says Alex Adamopoulos, Founder and CEO of emergn. “In today’s fast paced business environment, companies need a more flexible model to deal with changing business practices and keep everyone working towards the same business goals. By helping companies implement lean and agile principles across the entire value chain, emergn establishes a foundation for companies to optimize their IT organizations extending out to their vendor community.”

In July, emergn launched its AgilePMO™ service offering, providing a sustainable model that cuts across any IT project. AgilePMO™ leverages the practices within the emergn enablement model, providing transparency and a common framework for planning focused on attainable and measurable business value. The success of AgilePMO™ is predicated on embedding lean and agile practices and methods into an enterprise’s PMO and vendor community. This significantly increases business value across project environments and drives more accurate decisions at the PMO level, enhancing ROI and several other value currencies that define performance indicators. emergn has already seen an uptake in this offering as many companies are recognizing its value to overcome project failures.

Looking ahead, emergn has several new initiatives planned to build upon its success, including the introduction of AgileContract™. This new offering brings best practices from successful engagements to provide customers with structured contract management techniques and methods for projects that are not only focused on agile principles, but also significantly improve traditional waterfall contracts. In the past, contract structures have been unfairly weighted, putting all the risk on the buyer of sourcing services or completely outsourcing the risk to a third-party. But now, as companies are realizing this imbalance and are being pushed by tighter budgets and higher quality standards, they want to make vendors more accountable for the services they provide while still acknowledging their responsibilities. Organizations are looking for ways to facilitate better relationships through business methodologies like lean and agile and contracts must help buyers and suppliers collaborate and work towards common goals.

For more information, visit www.emergn.com. If you are a member of the press or analyst community interested in speaking with an emergn executive, please contact Meredith L. Eaton at emergn@marchpr.com to set up a briefing.

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About emergn Corporation
emergn Corporation is a specialized consultancy enabling organizations to apply lean and agile principles for continuous improvement across the value chain. By providing advisory, consultancy, and delivery expertise, emergn enables organizations to address the challenges of ad hoc project delivery, as well as the misalignment that exists between business, IT, and service providers. The emergn enablement framework puts best practices into place so that valuable skills and lean and agile principles are transferred into the foundation of the organization, enabling future project delivery. emergn was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in New York and London. For more, visit www.emergn.com.

Press Contact
Meredith L. Eaton
March Communications
+1 617 960 9877
emergn@marchpr.com

Impediments to agile development remain

johnvanderpool — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:28:02 +0000

Impediments to agile development remain
by David Rubinstein, SD Times – December 1, 2009

Read full article here

emergn Builds Blueprint for British Airways’ Agile Enablement

johnvanderpool — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:20:46 +0000

Lean and Agile Principles Key for Airline Giant to Create Repeatable, Rapid and Accurate IT Process Frameworks

NEW YORK – November 19, 2009: emergn, a specialized consultancy enabling Lean and Agile principles across the value chain, today announced a series of successful projects with British Airways that have laid the foundation for the airline giant’s corporate-wide adoption of Lean and Agile project management principles. Following project engagements to implement methods for faster, higher-quality web site software development, British Airways has moved forward with emergn to move from waterfall development methodologies to Agile methods across multiple areas of the IT estate.

emergn’s engagement began when British Airways made the decision to find a new method for developing software elements of its web site more quickly and with higher quality. After consulting with emergn’s team of experts, the airline industry leader seeded its Air Miles, Revenue Management and Customer Focused Selling groups within the BA.com division with emergn coaches to instill Lean and Agile project management principles. With emergn’s coaches mentoring business and technology team members on using Lean and Agile principles like user story creation, continuous improvement and retrospective planning, British Airways realized significant productivity gains, higher quality and much shorter ROI lifecycles in the BA.com groups.

“We expected these projects to ultimately yield a set of repeatable, standardized processes that would allow us to be more nimble and efficient, but we never realized how fast we would start to see a noticeable, positive effect,” says Mike Croucher, head of software engineering at British Airways. “The effect on the speed at which benefits can be realized has made a profound difference in the way we now approach projects, and beyond that we see emergn’s approach to Lean enablement as a scalable way for every part of our IT landscape to become more efficient. The foundation they’ve laid is helping us to become a self-sustaining Agile enterprise.”

emergn will continue to support British Airways with Agile coaching and mentoring as the company seeks to bring earlier benefit realization through Agile methodologies across the enterprise. With the larger scale nature of the initiative, emergn will help British Airways reshape the processes and behaviors that are crucial for aligning the efforts of IT and business leaders alike to operate effectively in an Agile environment.

“British Airways’ Agile adoption is a great example of how these principles, when implemented prudently, can drive the business and IT sides of an organization to collaborate more effectively and foster mutual responsibility for meeting business goals,” said Alex Adamopoulos, CEO of emergn. “As British Airways has proven, the benefits of instilling Agile principles are numerous. But what is just as important to realize is that adoption of Lean principles is best achieved when it is done as an iterative exercise itself. Creating a blueprint for broader rollout based on practical knowledge and planning is critical for understanding how to bring its benefits to the entire organization’s landscape. British Airways is on track to build a faster, nimbler more accurate business with its Agile program.”

For more information about emergn and the company’s other Agile enablement programs, visit www.emergn.com. If you are a member of the press or analyst community interested in speaking with an emergn executive, please contact Meredith Eaton at emergn@marchpr.com to set up a briefing.

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About emergn Corporation

emergn Corporation is a specialized consultancy enabling organizations to apply Lean and Agile principles for continuous improvement across the value chain. By providing advisory, consultancy, and delivery expertise, emergn enables organizations to address the challenges of ad hoc project delivery, as well as the misalignment that exists between business, IT, and service providers. The emergn enablement framework puts best practices into place so that valuable skills and Lean and Agile principles are transferred into the foundation of the organization, enabling future project delivery. emergn was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in New York with offices in London and Guangzhou, China. For more, visit www.emergn.com.

Press Contacts

Meredith L. Eaton/Nate Hubbell

March Communications

+1 617 960 9877

emergn@marchpr.com

Short Takes

johnvanderpool — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:50:30 +0000

Short Takes
by David Rubinstein, SD Times - November 15, 2009

Read full article here

Webinar – Agile in the Enterprise – .NET Development & Beyond

markbarnes — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:42:32 +0000

This previously recorded webinar with emergn is now available here

The original event was broadcast on:

Date: Thursday, October 8, 2009
Time: 2pm ET US/ 11am PT US / 7pm UK
Duration: One Hour
On Demand Webcast: Click Here

This previously recorded webinar with emergn provides an open and in-depth discussion that covered the following topics:

Challenges facing enterprise software organizations today
Limitations of traditional approaches to software development
Tangible value of adopting Agile for your organization
Roadmap to Agile adoption and greater development efficiencies

You’ll also learn how one Fortune 50 company began their Agile journey and embarked on a substantial initiative to align their development efforts with real business value.

http://event.on24.com/r.htm?e=162561&s=1&k=09EF3881CB52716E1DE52736C82DFDAE You can view the event archive at the link provided above.

Important: System Setup & Compatibility Check Test the computer that you will be using and make sure you have the minimum technical requirements to attend this event. Allow sufficient time prior to viewing the event for this test. Test at http://event.on24.com/clients/help/index.html

emergn Executives To Lead Live Discussion on Enterprise Agile Enablement

johnvanderpool — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 19:22:47 +0000

New York, September 29, 2009: Today emergn announced that the company’s CEO, Alex Adamopoulos, and Chief Strategy Officer, Portia Tung, will lead a webinar discussion on how to enable Agile management practices in the enterprise. The pair’s presentation will outline how emergn rolled-out an enterprise-wide Agile development and management program for a Fortune 50 company to overcome common software challenges.

Attendees Will Learn:
• How to overcome traditional software development limitations using Agile approaches.
• How to develop a roadmap to Agile adoption and greater development efficiencies.
• How to create tangible value of adopting Agile for your organization.

Webinar Details:
The webinar, “Agile in the Enterprise – .NET Development and Beyond,” will be hosted by InnerWorkings and will take place on October 8, 2009 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern time. To register for the webinar, click here.

Supporting Quotes:
“Enterprises rely on their software development teams to develop IT systems and applications on time and within budget, but often struggle to align project deliverables to the broader goals and needs of the business. In this webinar, we’ll be presenting methods we have used with our clients to roll out an Agile-based development program that can scale to meet enterprise requirements and create effective development environments,” commented Founder and CEO, Alex Adamopoulos.

Resources:
• Register for the webinar, click here.
• Download emergn case studies on enterprise Agile enablement.
• Alex Adamopoulos’ blog.
• Follow @emergn on Twitter.

Tags:
emergn, Agile, .NET, Software, IT, InnerWorkings

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About emergn Corporation
emergn Corporation is a sourcing strategy and Agile enablement consultancy. The company’s unified sourcing model brings the right balance of sourcing expertise, delivery and fulfillment capability, and industry-leading Agile enablement services to help companies address the continuous challenges of ad hoc project delivery and the misalignment that exists between business, IT, and service providers. The company was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in New York with offices in London and Guangzhou, China. The company maintains close relationships with leading industry organizations, such as the Scrum Training Institute, Agile Alliance, LISA, IAOP, and many others. For more, visit www.emergn.com.

Press Contact:
Meredith L. Eaton
March Communications
+1 617 960 9877
emergn@marchpr.com

emergn Offers Agile and Lean Training Courses

johnvanderpool — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:30:18 +0000

Participants will Learn how to Improve their Software Development Processes

London, September 22, 2009: Today emergn announced a series of new Agile and Lean training courses designed to accelerate the learning curve. Courses such as the Agile Overview, Agile Development, Agile Project Management and Testing for Developers with xUnit will be delivered globally for both the public and corporations beginning in Dublin and London throughout October and November. These courses will help Agile developers and team leaders put theories into practice. The instructors are experts in their industries and will share valuable experiences and discuss how these practices work in the real world. Scheduling and registration information is available on emergn’s website here.

Upcoming Course Details:
• Agile Overview: October 28 in Dublin, November 23 in London
This intensive 1-day course will provide participants with information to begin applying Agile at work through a series of learning games and exercises.

• Agile Development: October 19-20 in Dublin, November 16-17 in London
This 2-day hands-on tutorial will provide techniques for improving productivity and quality of deliverables while reducing the organisation’s technical debt. It will also help participants understand the role and responsibilities of an Agile Developer so challenges become opportunities.

• Agile Project Management: October 22-23 in Dublin, November 19-20 in London
This 2-day course consists of interactive exercises that provide Agile project managers and team leads with the opportunity to put effective tools into practice.

• Testing for Developers with xUnit: October 12-14 in London
This 3-day course provides the participants with a vocabulary of test smells and patterns to elevate their test code writing. These smells give them a way to reason about the quality of their test code and the reusable test code design patterns can be used to eliminate the smells.

Supporting Quotes:
• “emergn is a strong proponent of continuing education through Agile courses, especially in an industry that is experiencing significant growth. We regularly use the principles and practices described in our courses to provide value and affect ongoing improvement in both enterprises and providers,” commented Founder and CEO, Alex Adamopoulos.

Resources:
• For scheduling and registration, visit emergn’s site.
• Follow @emergn on Twitter.

Tags:
emergn, Agile, Training

# # #

Press Contacts
Meredith L. Eaton
March Communications
+1 617 960 9877
emergn@marchpr.com

Standard Life and BT Executives Share IT Success Stories at London Forum

johnvanderpool — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:06:44 +0000

London, September 16, 2009: emergn announced today the details of a live forum, called Agile: Business Enabled Through IT, to be held in London on September 24, 2009. The Forum will feature presentations from Standard Life and British Telecom (BT) executives detailing how Agile methods have enhanced their companies’ IT performance.

Standard Life’s Head of Business Solutions, Bill Birnie, and BT’s Managing Director of Global Platforms, Ashish Gupta, will discuss how they have each enabled Agile project teams to deliver higher-quality applications more quickly and increase overall productivity across their organizations.

Key Facts:

• Ashish Gupta’s presentation, Enabling Agility, will outline how BT addressed delivery challenges for the telecom provider’s 21CN initiative through widespread Agile development methods enablement. Further, he will describe how the lessons from 21CN have been extended to other complex initiatives at BT with excellent results.

• Bill Birnie will show how Standard Life’s award-winning Agile enablement strategies are achieving higher productivity levels and reducing application development costs. He will describe the process of enabling these new methods that Standard Life used to change business processes and beliefs that had been in place for many years.

Supporting Quotes:

• “Here we have two IT leaders from brand-name businesses talking about the strategies that have worked to solve major delivery challenges within their organizations. And, unsurprisingly, these strategies have involved large-scale enablement of Agile-based methods,” said Alex Adamopoulos, CEO, emergn Corporation. “With the enablement of Agile methods that are directly tied to the needs of the business, Ashish Gupta and Bill Birnie have both enabled their companies to deliver critical systems faster and increase cost efficiencies. This Forum will provide a chance to hear straight from them exactly what has worked, what hasn’t, and to learn how these lessons can be applied across other IT-critical situations.”

Resources:

• Contact John Vanderpool at john.vanderpool@emergn.com to attend this invitation-only event.
• Download Standard Life, BT and other exclusive emergn content.
• Visit emergn CEO Alex Adamopoulos’ blog.
• Visit emergn’s company blog, blogn, to hear from other emergn executives.
• Follow @emergn on Twitter.

Tags:

emergn, Agile, Sourcing, Enablement, IT, BT, Standard Life

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About emergn Corporation

emergn Corporation is a sourcing strategy and Agile enablement consultancy. The company’s unified sourcing model brings the right balance of sourcing expertise, delivery and fulfillment capability, and industry-leading Agile enablement services to help companies address the continuous challenges of ad hoc project delivery and the misalignment that exists between business, IT, and service providers. The company was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in New York with offices in London and Guangzhou, China. The company maintains close relationships with leading industry organizations, such as the Scrum Training Institute, Agile Alliance, LISA, IAOP, and many others. For more, visit www.emergn.com.

Press Contact

Meredith Eaton
March Communications
+1 617 960 9877
emergn@marchpr.com

emergn’s Alex Adamopoulos launches unified sourcing

johnvanderpool — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:57:17 +0000

emergn's Alex Adamopoulos launches unified sourcing
Podcast by Alex Peake, The Agile Journal – August 25, 2009

Listen to podcast here here