About me – NEIL WALKER

Hi there! I’m Neil Walker—a business agility and product specialist with over 30 years of hands-on experience spanning product delivery, engineering, leadership, advisory, and coaching. My career has been a wiggly, evolving journey, starting in retail banking and growing into a rich tapestry of innovation and transformation across diverse industries.

I was an early advocate of Agile, embracing its principles well before the Agile Manifesto was written. In the early 1990s, I was one of a select few chosen from NatWest Bank’s 70,000 employees to explore lightweight software development methods—a decade before Agile became mainstream. Since the early 2000s, I’ve experimented with Agile approaches beyond technology, enabling marketing, sales, product development, finance, logistics, health, and social care to achieve higher levels of agility.

One of my proudest achievements was revitalizing a social care service using Agile principles. By co-designing a radical approach to operations, we achieved a 50+% improvement in outcomes within just six months. This included dramatic reductions in cost, wait times, and delivery times, leading to greater efficiency and better outcomes for clients and families. These results exemplify how I combine innovation with Agile methodologies to deliver impactful change.

Beyond work, I’m an outdoor enthusiast who thrives on exploration and experimentation. Whether Halfbiking (yes, its a thing), or simply embracing nature, I’m fueled by curiosity and a love for learning. Agile has not only shaped my career but also my personal philosophy—believing that life is about discovering new possibilities, embracing change, and having fun along the way.

Neil