For US-based agile transformation specialist Troy Plant, successful digital turnarounds come from teams who are willing to adopt agile ways of working in the pursuit of their goals: fail fast, iterate and always learn. That’s how he’s driven new agile adoption and digital strategies for multiple Fortune 100 companies, during his time with consultancies Accenture and SolutionsIQ.
As MMT expands into the US, it's great to have Troy spearheading our support of existing international clients as well as onboarding new ones.
We’re extremely excited that he’s part of the MMT team and can’t wait for more businesses in the US to benefit from his expertise. To help you get to know him a little better, we sat down for a chat about what makes him tick and what MMT can bring to the US.
Your relationship with MMT goes back more than a decade. How did you first get to know the company?
I was on secondment to Pearson Education UK in Oxford, England back in 2012, leading three agile projects across different departments within the company. We hired MMT to be the development partner for one project, that’s when I met co-founders James Cannings and Ben Rudman, and Chief Technical Officer Mark Starling. At the time they’d been primarily working on waterfall projects, where each phase of development is completed before the next. The high levels of customer and vendor collaboration leading to the success of the Pearson project was one of the reasons MMT decided to reshape their service offerings around agile methodologies, so they could really engage with a business closer and take a more iterative approach to development to produce results quicker.
What made you join MMT 10 years later?
I’d kept in touch with them since we met because I’m a big fan of how they approach the work, and their ability to drive organization change through a digital business strategy. I could tell MMT was going to go far under their strong leadership and watching them evolve and grow over the past decade has been really exciting. Culturally and values-wise there’s a huge amount of alignment between my way of working and theirs, so it was an easy decision when given the opportunity.
And what are those values and synergies that are so key to you and your work with MMT?
I’m passionate about enhancing the people culture and ways of working in an organization, which is a critical part of a successful digital transformation and one of MMT’s real strengths. I want to create working environments in which people have time and space to continuously improve and feel the psychological safety required to enjoy what they are doing. This helps enable the pace of change which is required to be successful in business today. It’s one reason MMT has thrived in the UK and what we want to establish in the US.
How do you achieve growth while maintaining effective communication as teams scale up?
My background is in agile product management, scaling agile operating models and complex solution delivery. In a large organization that means multi-team solutions involving 100+ people where scaled agile frameworks may come into play. I help to set the right structures and create the right mindset and governance that shape how large delivery teams can be successful. The key is still to focus on the people and their interactions, and be powered by strong leadership to drive the change that is required to make the right strategy decisions and to remove the organizational impediments.
What can MMT bring to the US digital transformation market that’s different?
We build platforms and partnerships that empower businesses to realize digital value, faster. By cutting through complexity, with the agility to think and do, we guide organizations to be digitally better – making positive impact on internal teams, customers and the bottom line. We are committed to doing the right thing and this means we are able to build trusted relationships with our clients. We are also highly curious and always learning and I think that’s another reason clients enjoy working with us. It’s been a great learning experience in the last 10 years to work with people from different countries because you can discover so much from each other. The opportunity to meet, talk and connect with people from around the world is great. Lots of the brands we work with are global, so the ability to work across borders is really important. Our presence in the US will help us deliver even more comprehensive global solutions to clients.
What key message would you give to any US enterprise thinking of partnering with us?
We can be trusted to deliver value quickly, by focusing on aligning all work to the company strategies, product vision, and enabling that with a history of strong engineering practices. That’s our key focus. And although we might be an unknown entity in the US, our experience and success working with international clients shows that we’re very good at what we do. We’re committed to helping you accomplish your goals and we’re here for the long haul.
A successful digital transformation is increasingly a prerequisite for a high performing business. If you’re a US organization looking to unleash the potential of its digital products and services we can help. To find out how our digital transformation consultancy can support your business to thrive, book a discovery call.
