A Framework for Business Change Teams
Available on Amazon
Many change teams try to run agile the way a software team would. It rarely fits. A sprint that must produce something shippable every two weeks makes sense when the shippable thing is code. It makes far less sense when the team is redesigning a claims process, closing an acquisition, or shifting how a division sells. Agile Lineout was built to close that gap — a framework built from first principles using Systems Theory, Behavioural Science, and Lean, designed for teams whose value takes longer than a fortnight to show.
What this book is about
Like a rugby lineout, which adapts its structure in real time based on what the opposition is doing and what plays are available, Agile Lineout is a contextual framework — one that uses the team’s actual situation to shape how it works, rather than prescribing a fixed set of ceremonies and artefacts.
Lineout started as a more complete alternative to Scrum. That case still holds, but its stronger case now is its alignment with the PMI’s Manifesto for Enterprise Agility: Lineout turns out to be a practical way to apply the manifesto’s principles at the level of an actual working team.
The book is structured as a coach’s handbook: guidance for the people responsible for helping teams, software and non-software alike, develop genuinely adaptive working practices, with specific attention to team building, motivation, and the cultural conditions that let continuous improvement survive past the first few iterations.
Key themes
- Why software’s sprint cadence often doesn’t fit business change, and what to use instead
- Aligning with the PMI’s Manifesto for Enterprise Agility
- Team building and motivation as a coached discipline, not an afterthought
- Context-tailored coaching: reading what a team actually needs rather than applying one fixed method
- Mobilising stakeholders at scale, including a model for when far more volunteers respond than you planned for
- Where AI enters a change team’s work, and the coaching vocabulary it requires
- Coaching novice and non-software teams through the challenges Scrum’s deliberate minimalism leaves them to solve alone
Who it’s for
Written for coaches and leaders running business change: transformation programmes, operating model shifts, and teams in operations, HR, finance, customer service, procurement, and legal who want to work more adaptively but for whom Scrum’s software origins create unnecessary friction. Also relevant to coaches of novice software teams looking for a more complete starting point.
Related services
- Stakeholder Mobilisation: The Volunteer Army Sprint
- Dynamic Skills Strategy & Workforce Redesign
- Culture Canvas & Intent-Based Leadership Coaching
Get the book
Get Agile Lineout on Amazon — PDF, iPad, Kindle formats available.