Alchemy Solutions is blazing a trail for women in tech and has established itself as a leading professional services firm specialising in digital transformation and business reinvention.
Lead image: Alchemy Solutions women attending the prestigious Women Leading Tech 2024 Awards Ceremony presented by Atlassian.
The consultancy, which grew by 285 per cent in 2023, helps organisations accelerate their digital, functional, and human capabilities through a team of organisational change experts working with teams to design and implement transformation programs that deliver tangible and meaningful results, in sectors including financial services, retail, energy and utilities, and the not-for-profit sector.
Alchemy Solutions recently launched the next evolution of its Corporate Learning Services division, led by Sarah Rose, which focuses on partnering with leaders to achieve and sustain business agility by uplifting capability through training, certification, coaching and advisory.
More than 50 per cent of Alchemy Solutions’ team are women, with about a third joining since January this year. This is a high percentage, with the IT workforce notorious for being male dominated and having as little as 28 per cent female representation, according to a PwC report.
Testament to Alchemy Solutions’ philosophy is that five women were recognised in the prestigious 2024 Women Leading Technology Awards with two – Kirstin Lanyon and Mary Evans – making the finals of the customer success and delivery categories.
These impressive results illustrate a strong culture of diversity and inclusion, making Alchemy Solutions a standout among its competitive set.
Under Sarah Rose’s leadership as Director of Agile and Learning Services, the consultancy has become a trusted learning partner.
“Differentiated by our passion for leadership, change and continuous exploration, we help leaders create organisational environments that leverage emergent learning” Rose said.
“We partner with leaders to understand the capabilities that will distinguish their organisation from others and deliver the necessary capability solutions to solve real business problems today whilst creating resilience for the future.”
Examples that bring Alchemy Solutions’ client-centric philosophy to life are the work of Mary Evans and Ruby Evenstar.
Working with one of the consultancy’s clients, Evans recently helped a multinational software company uplift its delivery performance for its clients, which includes the likes of carmakers Subaru, Jaguar Land Rover and BMW.
This involved training scrum teams and embedding herself within the organisation to become a player-coach where she participated in team activities and provided coaching in real time. Evans received recognition for keeping scrum masters aligned with new processes, while raising standards and project effectiveness across regionally distributed teams.
“I coached teams to embrace Agile principles and techniques, including iterative development which resulted in a 47 per cent increase in velocity,” Evans said.
“By prioritising effective communication and stakeholder engagement practices in conjunction with leveraging Agile SAFe Competency Assessments across teams, we successfully uplifted average core competency by 37 per cent.”
Evans told B&T that Alchemy Solutions’ integrated approach to supporting clients is unique, leveraging training and certification, coaching and facilitation, resourcing and augmentation, and advisory throughout the engagement lifecycle.
“We start by diagnosing pain points and any issues they’re experiencing. From our assessment we determine the capability development pathway, by co-design with the client, to suit the context of the organisation and the nature of the uplift required” she said.
“As a Scrum Coach, I aim to become embedded in the process and continuously check to make sure that we are delivering on what the client needs.”
Evans said that when an organisation is struggling to effectively deliver results it can often be due to communication problems and individuals working in silos.
“I’m a big promoter of soft skills like communication and teamwork, which is what Agile prioritises,” she added. “We want to breakdown silo mindsets and encourage teams to share knowledge and foster a culture of continuous improvement.”
Evenstar, who was recognised in the Women Leading Technology Awards, is an Agile Coach and Consultant working with a range of Alchemy Solutions’ clients including one of Australia’s big four banks where in 2023 she supported domain orchestration executives to plan and implement their adoption of Agile methodologies.
Her role involved delivering targeted training to grow capability in Product Management and post-training contextualisation workshops for around 350 product professionals across the bank. Evenstar’s impact contributed to a 76 per cent completion rate of the certification program and more than 20 project teams successfully adopting Agile.
The bank’s Director of Agile Capability told the Women Leading Tech Awards “Ruby’s inclusive and practical style of coaching was key to improving the employee experience of ways of working changes, and the maturing of Agile practices within the organisation. Despite the organisation taking a customised approach to its Agile model, Ruby’s clarity in explaining our new ways of working and the why behind these drove acceptance and uptake.”
Visit the Alchemy Solutions website to find out more about the consultancy.
