Our story

Before starting our company we had used Kanban at several companies and in diverse situations and software projects. Unlike many other Agile methods, it felt like a natural, simple, and powerful way to make a team excel and deliver great software.

Recently around July 2012 in Toronto, Canada, we decided that our experience “from the trenches” of software development could be valuable to many others who are pursuing Agile and higher productivity, but finding it difficult to achieve, or who are stuck in their progress. We decided to start a company that would deliver Agile services and products using Kanban as our method.

Why is our company called “AgileLion Institute”?

We chose Agile as part of our name because we fully identify with the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto, and we believe that any IT or software department can be Agile. We know that “light-weight” methods are far better than “heavier” ones to deliver working software, or any IT solution.

However, Agility goes beyond IT and software development, it gives companies the ability to react to change, and deliver value faster than the competition. Being Agile should not be optional, because it gives you strategic advantage in any market.

Kanban shines more than other methods like Scrum because of it’s simplicity, and ability to scale not just inside IT, but to a whole company. Another key advantage is that you can start your Kanban agile journey at any point, no radical change is required, but steady continuous improvement will surely come with it. Our Agile approach uses Kanban and the best ideas of the Agile Movement to deliver high productivity, high morale and high quality software and solutions to any company, we call this approach: Agile Kanban.

Regarding the Lion, we chose it as an inspiration because it symbolizes confidence, bravery and noble aims. Values we respect and believe are crucial for any Agile journey.

About our choice of being an Instititute. Any new company needs to find a focus. We knew our focus was going to be Agile Kanban, but that is still too broad. We needed to decide how we would deliver Agile Kanban solutions to potential customers. We had several options: - To be just an Agile Consulting company - Or just a software and Drupal web development company - Or to concentrate on bringing our Agile Kanban experience to the people via Coaching and Teaching

Once we saw that our best possible influence was through teaching and coaching, we decided to become an Institute. AgileLion Institute focuses on Agile Kanban solutions for IT and software development.

What does our company do?

• We teach and coach online and face-to-face about Agile Kanban methodologies for IT and software development.
• We spread our Agile Kanban knowledge with your help
• We practice what we preach, by building great Drupal websites using the Agile Kanban method and the best available technology.
• Our Lion Pass web service gives our students instant access to all their course material, and lots of valuable related information.
• We give all our students, upon completion of their courses, our AgileLion Certificate. Students can also opt-in to show their accomplishments on their Lion Pass page.
• For our Drupal software development customers we want to show them how Agile Kanban makes any project a joy to create, launch, enhance and maintain. We want to share with them the best technologies for their business like Responsive Design for mobile websites and Cloud architecture for scalability.
• Finally we want to bring joy to our students by make education useful and fun. We appreciate everyone students and customers for choosing us as their solution provider.

How is our company different from our competition?

One of the main principles we follow in our company is to treat others as we would like to be treated.

We consider every person, and every company we work with as invaluable, and we aim to improve their productivity, and individual skills.

Our vision is to improve continuously, and to share this know-how with our customers. We don’t take any method as the only one, we have a pragmatic approach to them, we use what works, refine on the best, and keep improving! This is the Kaizen way!

Another key differentiator is that we don’t just coach or teach on Agile methods, we use them everyday. We developed our website from scratch on a Cloud architecture, using Drupal and responsive design, just test this website on your favorite mobile device. We like software development, and we enjoy Agile Kanban to make it more fun and productive =)

Although we are a young business, we have been in IT for over a decade, we truly want to make the world a better place, especially the software and IT world! We want to bless people and companies with great services, inspiring courses and valuable, useful knowledge.

Finally, we wanted to mention that for us it is very important to enjoy life and be fun. Nothing beats being happy at what you do. We are not in this for the money; we are in this to enjoy the journey, and to make others enjoy their journey too! Thanks for visiting us!

Our Team

Joseph Hurtado

Founder, Sr. Agile Coach, Kanban Ace Trainer, SAFe SPC 4, Scrum CSM, Agile Project Manager, amateur photographer, and coffee fanatic