Rego Consulting: Agile and PPM All-rounder

Rego Consulting

Robert Greca, Managing Director, Rego ConsultingRobert Greca, Managing Director
For Rego Consulting, Project Portfolio Management(PPM) and Agile are like the two sides of their token of expertise. The consultancy is well-versed in leveraging both to create new business processes that entail the fast and efficient task execution style of Agile in a robust, structured operational framework of PPM. Rego Consulting has successfully orchestrated the transition to Agile from PPM for more than 650 organizations. Over 60 percent of the firm’s clients are Fortune 100 companies, and from them, 70 percent are Fortune 20 companies. In this interview with Jeff Barschaw, Director of Agile Practices, and Robert Greca, Managing Director of Rego Consulting, talk about how Rego Consulting’s deep expertise in Agile and PPM help their clients to successfully evolve their business process toward better performance and optimum efficiency.

How has Rego Consulting positioned itself in the Agile landscape?

Robert: When we started 13 years ago, our initial focus was on project portfolio management using Clarity. As the years went on and Agile gained more prominence, our customers asked us to augment their processes with Agile. Hence, our Agile practices came into being.

Many Agile firms believe that implementing PPM and Waterfall in their business operation is bad. We don’t necessarily think that way. There is a place and purpose for both methods, and knowing how to connect those methods is something that our customers find value in. Jeff: Because we have deep expertise in both worlds, we can help our clients navigate away from PPM where it makes sense. We can show them what they’re doing today and how that can transition to Agile and help them get there step-by-step.

What are some of the challenges that your clients face when making the Agile transition?

Jeff: We can talk to our clients about the process and people, which requires deep knowledge of all Agile practices, including Scrum, Kanban, and Scaled Agile. With the rising popularity of Scaling Agile, most enterprises are challenged with how to implement it across their organization. The question we get the most while trying to run an Agile process in a client’s company is how we implement the methodology in a scalable and iterative manner to match their long-term plans and embed a feedback loop. Additionally, their financial team wants to know how to track the capitalization of their financials in an Agile context. Robert: Companies seldom develop the muscles to address any transformation needs. Mostly, they are not prepared to pivot and adopt new methodologies with changing times. We want our customers to develop some muscles. Our depth of knowledge in the tooling suite, which includes PPM tools and Agile lifecycle management tools, allows us to look at the three pillars of people, process, and tools together and help the organization move forward.

Can you elaborate to our readers on the various services that Rego Consulting provides?

Robert: We can talk to our clients about the process and people, which requires deep knowledge of all of the Agile practices, including Scrum, Kanban, as well as Scaled Agile. We are a Tier 1 Broadcom partner that has a level of expertise and trust in the skills and knowledge of Clarity and Rally applications. We understand exactly how to make these tools do what we need them. We never customize the tools and keep them upgrade proof for customers, as any potential customization can do more harm than good.

We have highly experienced practitioners who can creatively integrate the tools with the client’s business operations. They know how to get these tools working to support the newly developed processes and create favourable business outcomes.

Jeff: We just got a silver partnership with Scaled Agile, Inc.(SAI), with which we can provide SAFe certification classes that go hand-in-hand with the client’s business transformation. Sometimes, when they try to do something that demonstrates an anti-agile pattern, we help them understand that what they’re doing may not be the best long term solution and then help them get through that.

  • We believe that with our deep experience in both PPM and Agile, we can connect them into something that our customers will find is of a great value


We know that if we come and provide them with a great solution, they will call us back for another solution when the market changes. So, our approach is to help our clients to navigate the changes (change management) in their business process and evolve it in the meanwhile so that they don’t have to call anybody to cope with the next problem.

Please throw more light on how you engage with clients.

Jeff: We’ve even applied an Agile approach to our client engagements. We plan out the engagement in Agile taxonomies. If they are newly transitioning to Agile, they can see how we can apply a real-world problem to the tooling. We show them that we recommend the Agile implementation approaches and follow them as well. We even have workshops to bring them into the space of solving the problem.

Robert: One phrase that we use with our coaches is that it’s one thing to be an expert, but you can sometimes run the risk of dismissing the wisdom of your clients. So, while collaborating with our customers, we try to share the knowledge that we have and why we are recommending something. If there’s something that they have concerns about or would like to contribute to the solution, we’re completely open to their feedback. There could always be a new right answer, and we would love to learn about it.

What makes Rego Consulting unique and different from its competitors in the marketplace?

Jeff: The staff of Rego Consulting, myself included, come from the PPM and Agile domain. A lot of us were software developers before we were coaches. We’ve utilized these tools on the ground and thus, have a unique understanding of the real-world challenges versus the theoretical solutions that might be applied. So, while giving our clients recommendations, we’re pulling from our expertise in the domain. By having our practitioners help our clients, we bridge the gap between the theoretical ‘This is how it should work’ and the practical ‘This is how it works.’ Often, as we help our clients solve something, they come back to us to help them solve the next set of issues, problems, or transitions. So, I think the unique thing about us is how we approach our clients. We work to become true partners with their organization, and that partnership is what creates opportunities with them.

Robert: Our tool expertise is amazing. We are always trying to innovate when utilizing the PPM and Agile tools together or individually. In fact, our President, Dan Greer, invests a lot to develop innovative solutions and our customers always appreciate that. In addition, we also invest in the education of our coaches to aid in their career development to achieve their maximum potential.

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