My Story Behind Value Amplified
After leaving Scrum.org at the end of September (I knew that month would be my last with the team a few weeks prior), I started to ask myself, ‘What’s next?’. My wife and I talked and thought a lot. I have always worked (other than 1 semester in college) since I could work legally and even before that I had paper routes and other odd jobs. So, was it time for a break? My gut said yes, take some time to rest and relax and then figure it out. I left Scrum.org on good terms, and I still talk with many of the team members and trainers I worked with over the past 11 years.
For many of you who don’t know, I love helping people and part of that has been coaching girls high school lacrosse in my spare time over the past few years. With that in mind, I planned to focus more on coaching for a little while and decide my next venture once the season is over.
A Phone Call
After ending my time at Scrum.org, I decided to take a vacation at the beach in North Carolina to just get away, relax and do a little fishing, but that didn’t last long. My friend of more than 25 years and counterpart in several businesses in the past including Scrum.org Dave West called. I thought “wow he misses me already” 🙂
But no, he wasn’t missing me. For a long time we had been thinking that we could do even more to help people if we weren’t constrained by the Scrum Guide and the rules of Scrum, and did something different, together. We had spent years working together at multiple companies (Rational Software, IBM, Ivar Jacobson International, and Scrum.org), building products, helping teams, and driving growth. So what if we did it for others, in a company we started ourselves?
It Didn’t Take Long
Within a few hours of digesting the idea, I started to think of names, offerings and what we would need to do in order to get started. Those of you who know Dave know how passionate he can be and that passion bled right into me.
We wanted to do something different. We wanted to help people and companies. We wanted to use the experience we have gained growing companies and working with customers to build something that we can make our own.
AI has changed everything over the past few years and we are seeing many companies struggle to understand how it impacts them. They know it does, and they know they need to adapt, but they don’t know how. What needs to change, and what can they keep? Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, but don’t change everything just because you are adopting new technologies. Instead, embrace them and evolve.
So, Why Start Value Amplified?
First, we talked about how we could help. Our drive has always been about delivering more value. Delivering value to customers, users, the company, shareholders, and employees. Delivering more value to the people who care about the products they use and build. That passion drives both of us, and we believe we have some unique, or at least well-formed, ideas that can help. The name comes from a simple question: Can we amplify the delivery of value? Teams have always delivered value. The real question in the age of AI is whether they can deliver more. Delivering value didn’t feel like enough. We wanted to grow value, bring it to the forefront and yell it from the street corners; we wanted to amplify value and from lots of discussion and many other name ideas, Value Amplified was born.
That is how it started. We have built initial research based on our past work, and with others like Dr. Alan Brown (who wrote the foreword to my second book back in 1999), we codified those ideas and have published them on the website.
We designed offerings based on what we know has worked in our past lives, adapted for the new world of AI. I am sure they will evolve and change, and we have built them out in detail and started writing and designing. If you want to see how we can help, visit our Services page.
I have to care deeply about what I do, or it will not work for me, and this is something I am extremely passionate about. I love working with people, I love helping people and I love engaging with problems that need solving. I think we have a unique opportunity that doesn’t come along often to bring that passion to others and help them succeed, based on what we have learned working in technology companies over the past 30+ years.
I look forward to this next adventure with my “partner in crime,” Dave West, and to seeing where it takes us. I am excited to reengage with many people I haven't worked with in a long time, as well as some from more recent experiences. I am also eager to learn about the struggles teams are facing and how we may be able to help.
What I thought might be the end of my career has become a new beginning, and I am extremely excited about it! Reach out and let’s chat! You can email me at eric.naiburg@valueamplified.com or book time on my calendar.
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