Congratulations to our Commercial Director, Aaron, who has been nominated for an Agile Award 2014!
We are proud to announce that Aaron has been shortlisted to receive the award for “Best Agile Coach or Mentor – Process” at the Agile Awards 2014 held in London.
Aaron has worked on a variety of Agile projects this year, but is being recognised for his work on the EMIS Large Teams Agile Transformation project from February to August this year.
The UK Agile Awards were created to recognise and award top Agile talent. The event is for today’s practitioners and senior leaders in the UK who exemplify characteristics of conviction, passion, and courage. It recognises the challenge of adopting the discipline and serves to publicly recognise their efforts.
A full list of nominees can be viewed on the Agile Awards website here.
We all wish Aaron the best of luck and we will let you know how he gets on!
What Are the UK Agile Awards?
The UK Agile Awards, organised by the Agile Business Consortium, recognise outstanding contributions to agile practice across the United Kingdom. Categories span coaching, training, transformation leadership, and team excellence — celebrating individuals and organisations that push the boundaries of agile delivery.
Being nominated in the "Best Agile Coach/Trainer" category was a significant milestone for McKenna Consultants. It validated the hands-on, outcome-focused coaching approach we bring to every engagement — working alongside teams rather than delivering theory from a distance.
The EMIS Agile Transformation
The nomination was based on our work leading the agile transformation at EMIS, one of the UK's largest healthcare technology providers. This was not a textbook rollout. The transformation involved multiple cross-functional teams delivering clinical software used by thousands of NHS practices.
Key challenges included aligning teams with different working cadences, introducing iterative delivery to a domain where quality and compliance are non-negotiable, and building coaching capability that would sustain itself after our engagement ended.
Our approach combined Scrum coaching at the team level with broader organisational change management — helping leadership understand the structural shifts needed to support agile teams at scale. If you are planning a similar journey, our guide on how to build an agile transformation roadmap is a useful starting point.
Why Agile Coaching Matters
Agile coaching is more than facilitating ceremonies. Effective coaching helps teams build the habits, communication patterns, and decision-making skills that lead to sustained high performance. A good agile coach works themselves out of a job — transferring capability to the team and its leaders.
At McKenna Consultants, our coaching philosophy centres on three principles: meet teams where they are, focus on outcomes over process compliance, and build internal capability from day one. If you would like to discuss how coaching could support your teams, book a free consultation with us.
