Welcome to the Pliant Solutions Blog!

Here we talk about all things agile, leadership, teams, and mindfulness to help you along your organizational evolution.

Department of State Change of Name form

Call me Jeff — or anything other than Agile Coach.

What happened to all the Agile Coaches? Over the past year, dedicated agile contracts and, specifically, Agile Coach and Scrum
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Darren Hoevel talking to Johnathan Mostowski and Bryan Miles over Zoom

Agile Acquisitions

Darren Hoevel, President of Pliant Solutions, talks with Johnathan Mostowski, Founder & Principal of Agile Acquisitions, about aligning government acquisitions
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Marnie Custom Homes group photo

Pliant Solutions Empowers Marnie Custom Homes with Leadership Coaching

Pliant Solutions LLC Empowers Marnie Custom Homes with Innovative Leadership Coaching Program Bethany Beach, DE – Pliant Solutions LLC is pleased
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Hands holding a paper water drop

The Teardrop Model

Avoid Crying About Accountability with Our Teardrop Model As wonderful as agile is in creating empowered teams, it can also
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Agile Pain Point: Product Debt

What’s Product Debt? Product Debt is the culmination of competing business needs, functionality requests, hastily made design decisions, quick fixes,
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Boot stepping on a butterfly

I’m Sick of the Word “Transformation”

I’m sick of the word transformation. There, I said it.  Organizational transformation, at least in the business world I’m in, implies
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SpaceX-rocket-ship

Partnerships Build Spacecraft

It wasn’t the launch (or lack thereof) of SpaceX’s first American commercial crewed rocketed spacecraft on May 27th that got me
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Agile After Dark Logo

Agile After Dark

Be sure to catch Darren Hoevel’s session on Daring Leadership at Agile Baltimore’s Agile After Dark on March 25, 2020! LEADER: Anyone who
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Sky view of mountains and clouds

Reminder: Keep an Open Mind

Homophily: Birds of a feather flock together.  A large number of network studies have shown we generally surround ourselves with
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NCMA Tyson's logo

2020 NCMA Tyson’s Leadership Summit

As a panelist at the NCMA Tyson’s Leadership Summit on March 11, 2020, Darren Hoevel will dive into the disucssion on Overcoming Obstacles and
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Innovate VA logo

WTF is Adaptive Leadership?

Darren Hoevel and Bryan Miles are Presenting at InnoVAte Virginia 2020 on March 27, 2020 and University of Maryland’s Project Management Symposium on May 8, 2020! Adaptive
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Agile Charm 2020

 Be sure to catch Darren Hoevel at Agile Charm in Baltimore, MD on February 13, 2020! The World Needs Brave
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Funny retro swimmer by the lake, at the sunset with copy space

Don’t wait for the perfect time. Start by visualizing the work.

If You Wait to Start Your Agile Initiative, You May Never Actually Start. If you’re waiting for the perfect time
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Stamped Word: Rules

Your Scrum Team is Not Delivering

“Each framework or methodology or certification is not the holy grail for how something should be done. Now I’m a
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Certifiably Certified

I’m up to something like 5,000 contacts on LinkedIn (I’m a people person, damnit!).  It’s safe to say, I don’t
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Hands holding a mindfulness flower

The Unspoken Practice of Agility

Last week I hosted an Agile Lunch and Learn for a government client. Our Lunch and Learns have typically been
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What You Missed at Agile2017!

Reminisce or see what you missed at Agile2017!
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Title slide for metrics presentation

Metrics that Matter

“Every line is the perfect length if you don’t measure it.” – Marty Rubin So your organization has embarked upon
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Indiana Jones looking at a treasure

Product Management: A Lost Art or Holy Grail?

In the adoption of agile, organizations are transitioning from a project approach to a customer centric product delivery model. Now,
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Music sheet

The Composition of High-Performing Teams

“Companies know that they dervice greater creativity and innovation from teamwork – but what, they wonder, makes a great team?”
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Leadership’s Role in Creating Conversations for Performance and Change

Pliant Solutions would like to extend a huge Thank You! to all who attended our first Agile Innovation Series session at
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Integral Agile Series: Spiral Dynamics

In this DC Organizational Agility Practitioners session, John Hughes talks about delivering impactful change through mindful awareness of people and
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Coaching. What is it?

Coaching. What is it?

This DC Organizational Agility Practitioners presentation is about coaching. It introduces the audience to coaching from sport coaching to personal
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