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May 15
Colin Pope joins the Equinox IT team
by Brendon Livingstoneon 15/05/2013 11:33
Colin Pope, Consultant, Equinox ITColin Pope
Welcome to Colin Pope who joined our Wellington office in April as a consultant within our Architecture Practice. Colin brings together a range of skills in architecture, consulting and business.
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April 16
New Additions to the Equinox IT Family
by Brendon Livingstoneon 16/04/2013 10:19
We are very pleased to welcome a number of new additions to the Equinox IT family since Christmas in both our Wellington and Auckland offices:

Ben Ponne, Architecture Practice, Equinox ITBen Ponne
Ben is an internationally recognised business leader and enterprise architect, and joined our Wellington office in January as a Principal Consultant within our Architecture Practice.




Rudi Moritz, Business Application and Product Development, Equinox ITRudi Moritz
Rudi is an experienced .Net software developer, and joined our Wellington office in January as a .Net Development Specialist within our Business Application and Product Development team.




Lisa Cheney, Business Change Consulting Practice, Equinox ITLisa Cheney
With a broad range of experience in consulting and leading business analysis activities, Lisa joined our Wellington office in February as a Consultant within our Business Change Practice.




Veronica O'Grady, Business Change Practice, Equinox ITVeronica O'Grady
Veronica has a specialist background in business rules management and building business capability, and joined our Wellington office in February as a Consultant within our Business Change Practice.




Daniel Jang, Business Systems Support Consultant, Equinox ITDaniel Jang
As a specialist in implementing and configuring business systems, Daniel joined our Wellington office in February as a Business Systems Consultant within our Technology Services team.




Stephen Soanes, Business Change Practice, Equinox ITStephen Soanes
Stephen is an experienced Consultant in business analysis and organisational change, and joined our Auckland office in February as a Consultant within our Business Change Practice.




Karen Change, Business Change Practice, Equinox ITKaren Chance
With extensive IT and business analysis experience Karen joined our Auckland office in February as a Consultant within our Business Change Practice. Karen has previous worked with Equinox in the past as an associate consultant.



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April 15
Equinox IT Launches New Kanban Course with Net Objectives
by Brendon Livingstoneon 15/04/2013 10:54
Equinox IT has launched a new Kanban course targeted at software development and IT professionals and anyone else who wants to better manage the workflow of their work. The new course entitled Kanban for Workflow Improvement – a Simulation places emphasis on the hands-on application of the Kanban approach through a simulation, providing just enough theory for attendees to complete the next section of the simulation.

The new course is based on the Net Objectives ‘Kanban / Lean-Scrum One Day Simulation’ training course, modified by Equinox IT for New Zealand conditions. Equinox IT has formed a training partnership with Net Objectives following Al Shalloway’s visit to New Zealand in February to work with us. As the founder and CEO of Net Objectives Al Shalloway is also recognised internationally as a thought-leader and expert on Lean, Kanban and Scrum approaches, and worked with Equinox IT in February to build the capability of both the Equinox team and the broader New Zealand IT community.

Kanban is an approach for visualising and managing workflow by not allowing work to exceed certain capacity levels, and has become a popular approach used on Lean and Agile software development projects as well as many other business and IT initiatives. Based on Lean principles relating to eliminating waste and using pull-based systems, Kanban can help raise productivity and quality and reduce delays and costs in team-based work environments.

Equinox IT has scheduled a number of Kanban for Workflow Improvement – a Simulation courses in Wellington and Auckland starting in May.
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April 12
Lean Experts to Visit New Zealand with Equinox IT
by Brendon Livingstoneon 12/04/2013 17:44
In June Equinox IT will welcome back Mary and Tom Poppendieck, international thought-leaders and authors on the topics of lean software development and lean leadership. Mary and Tom will visit Auckland and Wellington for one week with Equinox IT and deliver training and management briefings to grow awareness of and improve results through the application of lean principles and approaches.

Husband and wife, Tom and Mary are highly sought after pioneers and authors on the topic of applying lean manufacturing principles to software development and business. They last visited New Zealand with Equinox IT in December 2011, where they educated IT managers and professionals on Lean leadership.

Mary and Tom Poppendieck Lean Mindset WorkshopThe upcoming visit comes ahead of the launch on the Poppendieck’s new book ‘The Lean Mindset’, which will be available in September 2013. During their visit the Poppendiecks will deliver a public course in Wellington on 27-28 June, on this same topic Lean Mindset Workshop.

“There is strong evidence from around the world that the use of Lean principles and practices delivers better business and IT results” says Deane Sloan, Equinox IT Software Development Director. “We are committed to helping New Zealand organisations improve, and we are excited to have Mary and Tom Poppendieck return to New Zealand to work with Equinox IT and our clients”.

Equinox IT in February had Al Shalloway, another well-known international authority on Lean software development, in New Zealand training and presenting on the Lean approach Kanban. The Poppendieck visit provides another opportunity for organisations and professionals to raise their performance by understanding and using Lean approaches in their work.

Mary and Tom’s visit with Equinox will be one part of a larger 7 week trip for the Poppendiecks through Germany, Australia, and China, where they will be presenting and training on Lean topics.
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April 04
Equinox IT Company Day 2013
by Brendon Livingstoneon 04/04/2013 17:23

Equinox IT Company Day 2013Equinox IT has a company day annually where we get the whole company together to discuss the business plan and important topics for communication. This year's company day was held on Friday 22nd of March (another gloriously sunny late summer day) at Ohariu Farm, near Wellington.

Equinox continues to grow and with over 60 people attending and many new faces, for the first time we decided we needed name tags for people.

During the day we broke into groups and reported back on how Practices and areas of the business would contribute to the overall strategic themes set out in our business plan. It was fun to see the creativity that groups brought to presenting back their information. One of the software development teams used a sailboat retrospective approach to present their information (presenting what worked well (wind in the sails), what didn't work well (drag on the boat), and potential blockages (rocks in the water)). Another software development team used a Martin Fowler style dot voting approach to narrow down their top 3 ideas to present back. The Performance Intelligence Practice finished their already entertaining presentation with some theatre sports humour.

As is usual during our company days the serious stuff was mixed in with some fun stuff. In an extended lunch break we were able to participate in claybird shooting and a farmstyle golf range. In the claybird shooting our Chairman Kim Wicksteed used shrewd subliminal messaging, demonstrating just how accurate he is at picking out moving targets with a shotgun, achieving a hit rate of 4 out of 5 (claybirds that is).

The BOTY (bum of the year) award this year went to Bob Mortimer, who turned up at Ohariu Farm a week too early, wondering why they were setting up for a wedding. Our Managing Director Roger Dalgleish thanked him for visiting early to check out the venue. The SPOTY (star performance of the year) award went to Brendon Livingstone for his efforts relating to marketing.

The day was finished with some drinks at the bar before we boarded the bus back into the city.

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